For example, poem 2 of Book 1 is a speech to Cynthia dissuading her from meretricious behaviour, in particular the use of
cosmetics, and Propertius' mode of tackling the topic reveals much about his own personality, about Cynthia's personality,
and about how the two interrelate. Poem 16 shrilly enquires of Cynthia why she cannot display the devotion of Calypso,
Hypsipyle, and other romantic figures from myth-and exposes thereby a tension that pervades Propertius' life and fuels much
of his love poetry. For Cynthia of course is not a romantic figure from myth. But that is something that the romantic
Propertius finds so hard to accept. For a sample of a rhetorical poem the reader is referred to 2.8. There Propertius justifies
the grief he is exhibiting at the loss of Cynthia by an appeal to the vast grief displayed by Achilles on the loss of Briseis.
In Book 1, much of which may have been composed in the triumviral period, Propertius is non-aligned and non-attached. He
includes a bitter poem (21) on the Perusine war of 41 B.C., bitter at the expense of the victor Octavian. This sort of
independence of spirit is something he never loses.
Independence of spirit notwithstanding, the quality and popularity of Book 1 attracted the attention of Maecenas; and
Maecenas suggested, inevitably, that Propertius might be well employed in putting Augustus' deeds into epic. The opening
poem of Book 2 (first Augustan period) is a response to Maecenas' approach. It contains several interesting features. First, to
decline the proposition of epic, Propertius employs a device which had been invented by Virgil and was used by other poets,
including Horace. It is basically to say 'I would if I could', and to explain the inability by appeal to poetic powers or lack of
them, or to poetic alignment. Propertius, like Virgil, claims an alignment with Callimachus and, as everyone knew,
Callimachean aesthetics excluded epic. It is, however, clear that Propertius neither phrases his Callimacheanism seriously nor
indeed (unlike Virgil) was seriously Callimachean; nor did he intend to be taken very seriously. He is simply declining a
suggested imposition with grace and wit. And a bit of sting. When Propertius lists the heroic deeds of Augustus that he would
have celebrated, had he been able, Maecenas must have felt relief that he did not. The list contains the ugliest episodes of the
Civil War, including Perusia; and these, in the Augustan age, were best forgotten or reinterpreted.
Propertius declines the task of epic; but we must hereafter regard him as associated with the imperial circle-although this does
not mean that his independence is snuffed. Poem 2. 1 ends with the sort of praise for Maecenas that suggests the patronized:
'you whose favour all our young men covet and who are my true glory in life and will be when I die'; but the conclusion of
the poem also insists on Propertius' role as a love poet-until he dies. Poem 2. 7 rejoices in the abandonment of Augustus' first
attempt at legislation to coerce Romans into marriage; and in 2. 16, while making his characteristic noises about how
shocking and degraded he is, Propertius associates himself with the shocking, degraded, romantic and magnetic figure of
Mark Antony. Poern 2. 34 celebrates the imminence of Virgil's Aeneid and, in the last couplet, celebrates Propertius himself
as poet of Cynthia.
Book 3, written in the late twenties B.C., opens with poems (1 and 3) that are a flamboyant assertion of Propertius' role as
love poet and Callimachean. Not only flamboyant, pretentious: but one of the things Propertius is doing here is parodying
Horace's just published and pretentious claims to be a Roman Alcaeus. Yet the book exhibits less interest in love poetry and,
on the face of it, more concern with public issues. One scents the approach of the second Augustan period. But what
Propertius gives with one hand, he takes with another-by irony and other methods. For example, poem 4 celebrates Augustus'
expected Parthian victory. Propertius represents himself as the loyal observer of the triumph, reproducing an idea used by
Horace and Cornelius Gallus. But he adds the slightly insolent touch that he will observe from the vantage point of his
mistress's bosom; and he pairs the poem with one reminding us that Love is a god of peace.