Table Of ContentPROPERTIUS
ELEGIES
BOOK Il
— EDITED BY
t W.A CAMPS
; CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
in U.S.A.
PROPERTIUS: ELEGIES
BOOKI I
By W. A. CAMPS
Fellow of Pembroke College and Lecturer
in Classics in the University of Cambridge
This edition of Propertius II, the last in the
series edited by Mr Camps, follows gener-
ally the style and arrangement of Books I,
III and IV. Mr Camps presents, without
concealing difficulties and uncertainties, a
fairly conservative but readable and coherent
text (with selective apparatus), together with
sufficient annotation to help the modern
reader of Latin to understand the language
and follow the thought of this difficult,
much disputed, but very rewarding poet.
Throughout the series Mr Camps has had in
mind the needs of undergraduates and sixth
forms as well as other readers. The notes
are weighted differently from those in
Butler and Barber’s edition of 1933, and the
text also differs in some respects both from
the text of that edition and from the Oxford
text of 1960. A list of variants from the
Oxford text is provided for those who wish
to use these notes and that text together.
This book, like Book I, is almost wholly
concerned with the thoughts and feelings
[Continued on back flap
PROPERTIUS
ELEGIES
BOOK II
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Propertius, Elegies
Book 1 (1961)
Book ut (1966)
Book 1v (1965)
(Cambridge University Press)
EXMODIUSTOESCINIRUi es
[esperep
BOOK II
EDITED BY
W.A.CAMPS
Fellow of Pembroke College and
Lecturer in Classics in the University of Cambridge
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1967
Published by the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press
Bentley House, 200 Euston Road, London, N.W. 1
American Branch: 32 East 57th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022
© Cambridge University Press 1967
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 67—18309
Printed in Great Britain
at the University Printing House, Cambridge
(Brooke Crutchley, University Printer)
PREFACE
The aim of this edition of Propertius’ second book, like that of
its predecessors in the same series, is to present a coherent and
readable text of the poems, with annotation designed to help
the reader to follow the poet’s thought and understand his lan-
guage and allusions, while at the same time not concealing the
uncertainties which often attend the text or its interpretation.
Such uncertainties are fairly frequent in all Propertius’ work,
and most frequent and most acute in Book r1, because of certain
features distinctive of this book which are briefly mentioned
on pages 1-2 below. In a few places (e.g. xxii B and xxiv A-B, to
which some might add ili, 45-end of iv) the uncertainties
amount to a serious disfigurement, and the book has some-
times been suspected of being mutilated or disarranged. But it
seems in general to be in good order, and though there are
plenty of problems of detail, no one need be afraid in approach-
ing it of finding chaos and not finding pleasure. My hope is
that this edition may help forward the clarification of some of
the problems of the book, both in general and in detail. But still
less than its predecessors in this series can it hope to have more
than a provisional character, or to attain with anything near
completeness the aim stated in the sentence with which this
paragraph began. It is moreover all too likely that preoccupa-
tion with what seemed to me the most difficult problems
may have caused me to annotate some matters less fully than
would be desirable; but I hope that the existence of Enk's
large edition of the same book will be felt to justify, as well as
excuse, the restricted scope of this one.
The text presented here is based, as in the rest of this series,
on E. A. Barber's Oxford text, in this case the edition of 1960,
divergences from which are listed on pages 6-9 below. The
apparatus criticus is for the most part excerpted from the
same Oxford edition, again with the kind permission of the
v
PREFACE
publishers. The text, though it admits substantially more con-
jectures than the Oxford text, is none the less fairly conser-
vative. It includes seven transpositions of couplets, as against
three in the Oxford text and ten in Enk’s edition of 1962. It
assumes one lacuna as likely, as against six in the Oxford text
and one in Enk’s edition. It nowhere employs the obelus, which
the Oxford editor used thirteen times and Enk once. This
avoids the implication, more than usually hazardous in this
book, that what is not obelized is established, and allows the
text to wear a less forbidding aspect than else it might. On the
other hand a number of conjectures in the text are shown in
italics, to avoid giving them a currency premature or un-
deserved. This has not been done with all conjectures, nor is an
italicized conjecture necessarily supposed by the editor to be
less probable than one not italicized. The italics have been
used chiefly where the original reading may have been lost by
extrusion rather than by misreading (e.g. uidi at 1, 5), or where
a departure from the Oxford text substantially affects the
meaning of the passage (e.g. mon at xxxiv, 33). Such departures
are not necessarily new conjectures, though a few are.
In a number of elegies what seem to be well-defined stages,
or turns, in the development of the thought have been marked
by spacing in the text. This has not been done in all possible
places; sometimes from uncertainty, sometimes to avoid exces-
sive fragmentation (e.g. elegies 1xA, xix, xx, xxi, and several of
the shorter pieces). Sometimes the reader may wish to question
the analysis of a piece reflected in the spacing or absence of
spacing (e.g. at il, 45; X, I1; Xill, 39; Xv, 49; Xvi, 11; xxviii); but
I hope I have not often risked error where error could have any
serious consequences. I hope also that the spacing may be
helpful to the reader in certain positive ways, especially by
helping him over abrupt turns of thought (as in viii, and at
xiii, 17; xvi, 13, etc.), and by showing the unity of pieces such
as viii and i and xxxiv, and the schematic similarity of the
latter pair. It will be noticed that in i, 17—78 and xxxiv, 25-94,
vi
PREFACE
as here printed, exact numerical symmetry is misssed by one
couplet in each case. Nevertheless the elaboration of the pattern
in both pieces is such that there can surely be no doubt of the
poet’s intention to make such a pattern, whether exact or not.
In a few places (iii, 44; xvii, 16; xviii, 20 and xxxiii, 20 and
44) the punctuation ... has been used to mark a point at
which excitement seems to subside into resignation.
The traditional numeration of the elegies, though imperfect,
is preserved by modern editors for the sake of a consistent
system of reference. A revised numeration would be confusing
unless it could be definitive, and for that the time is not ripe.
Accordingly, editors express their views about the proper
demarcation between elegies by adding A, B, etc., where they
wish, to the traditional serial numbers, and keeping the
traditional numeration of the lines. Hence it results, for
example, that the piece numbered xxxB in the text below
begins with a line numbered not 1 but (xxx) 13, yet is taken
to be a separate elegy quite independent of the preceding
piece xxx A.
In preparing this edition I have relied on the same basic
works as in Books 111 and 1v. Naturally I have also referred to
the monograph on the structure of this book of Propertius by
Damon and Helmbold in University of California Publications
in Classical Philology, xiv (1952), 215ff. Above all, I have
drawn extensively and gratefully, and usually without separate
acknowledgement, on Enk's major edition of this same book,
which appeared in 1962 when my own work was in its early
stages. This edition of mine owes an immense and obvious debt
to Enk's. It is not a résumé of his book; still less is it capable of
being a rival. I hope it may be a useful complement, and that
it may help to make this part of Propertius! work available to
a wider circle of readers. J-P. Boucher's general study of
Propertius (Paris, 1965), in which I have since found a great
deal of profit and interest, reached me after my manuscript
had gone to the printers.
vii
PREFACE
It is a pleasure to thank Professors Brink, Fedeli and Luck
for very kind assistance on particular points. It is a pleasure
also to thank once again Messrs Lee, Sandbach and Wilkinson,
and Sir Roger Mynors, for the generous help and encourage-
ment they have given me in this book and in all the series which
it concludes, saving me from many errors and teaching me very
much that I should else not have known, at the cost of much
time and trouble to themselves. They have not seen the book
in its later stages, and are in no degree responsible for its
defects. Finally, I am glad to have this opportunity of thanking
too those who have been concerned with this book and its
predecessors at the Cambridge University Press. | W. A.C.
viii
