Classical World

Propertius’ last book offers elegy at its most vivid and varied, a feast for the reader’s emotions and imagination. For me it is the high point of Roman elegy, which Ovid can surpass in wit and metrical skill, but not in passion or power. So it was welcome news that Hutchinson’s commentary on book IV was due out in Cambridge University Press’ affordable paperback series, especially since Hutchinson was adding to his own considerable experience as a close reader and critic of Latin texts the fruit of his consultations with Stephen Heyworth, editor of the forthcoming Oxford Classical Text of Propertius.

In recent years, teachers of Propertius were able to share with their students Camps’ commentaries on individual books (book 4 in 1965), then Richardson’s useful commentary covering all four books (1978; repr. 2006), and most recently the bold insights of George Goold’s Loeb Classical Library text and translation. But Propertius, whether from his abrupt dislocations of thought or later dislocations and distortions in the tradition, is a tough challenge to editors (Housman never brought himself to publish his own text), however stimulating for students with fewer scruples about Latinity. The poet’s self-irony and pathos, along with his instinct for dramatic characterization, reaches a peak in his representation of women virtuous (4.3 and 4.11), vicious (4.4 and 4.5), and recriminatory and tempestuous (4.7 and 4.8), and of comic figures like the transvestite Vertumnus and Hercules. Innocence of Latin usage can even help to engage students’ imaginations. But they do need help with syntax, and unfortunately Hutchinson has sacrificed more elementary notes, not just to previous guidance on Propertius’ Callimachean and Augustan literary models (on which Hutchinson is superb) or on artistic and cultural context, but to textual discussions which can only intimidate the new reader.

This is probably why the Loeb Library asks editors to avoid obelizing, and Richardson sought to be “as conservative as is consistent with the production of readable poetry, keeping to a minimum obeloi and bracketed interpolations,” and “transposing only single couplets within a single poem” (21). What Hutchinson has given us is not a Green and Yellow student-oriented edition, but a commentary more fitted to Cambridge’s scholarly Orange series, like the admirable Ciris of his teacher, Oliver Lyne.

Thus, Hutchinson’s introduction compresses to a minimum Propertius’ place in the history of elegy and his own poetic evolution, and concentrates on exploring the continuity or discontinuity, the contrasts and echoes, offered by successive poems. For the teacher this will be as stimulating as the extraordinary range of cross-references to both ancient poetry and secondary [End Page 563] discussions; but here too lack of space prevents Hutchinson from quoting parallel phrases or arguments, and many of his modern sources will only be available in the richest libraries. The space consumed by Hutchinson’s scrupulous doubts about points of texts has been stolen from more basic material. As early as 4.1.8, Hutchinson obelizes Tiberis nostris advena †bubus erat†, but his substitute bubus iit (the verb form is not found in Propertius) is no improvement. Or take 4.4: Page 38 (4.55–82) starts with an unseemly emendation (dic . . . pariamne? “shall I give birth”), prints three obeloi and excises 73–74, although the lines neatly contrast the city’s first anniversary with the primitive pastoral Parilia: “this began as the first birthday for the walls, annual feasting for the shepherds and sport in the city.” And Hutchin-son simply drops 4.17–18 without trying to find it another position in the elegy. Hutchinson rightly questions iniustae praemia sortis (Propertius sees Tarpeia’s fate as well deserved) and his proposal incestae . . . amoris fits perfectly. But could any scribe garble such an obvious idea?

Instead I wish Hutchinson had discussed more fully how Propertius handles the unelegiac but patriotic theme of combat in 4.6 and 4.10...