Abstract

After having been for some while the butt of conservative critics, verse transpositions in Propertius have, mainly thanks to the work of G. P. Goold, again become respectable among scholars. In his edition of Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius J. J. Scaliger , the great archeget of the method, had subjected the other great elegist of Propertius’ generation to the same treatment,2 and in fact one of Scaliger's transpositions is supported by external evidence: 1.5.71–6 belong after 6.32; this is confirmed by Ovid's imitation in Trist. 2.447ff. Trist. 2. 459–60 echo Tib. 1.6.31f. and 5.73 . That Ovid should have brought together in one distich verses from two different Tibullian poems may not seem wholly impossible, but much less likely than that the lines in Tibullus were also consecutive, in particular because the distich immediately preceding 459f. clearly refers to the situation of Tib. 1.6