SOURCE: "Sextus Propertius," in The Poems of Propertius, translated by Constance Carrier, Indiana University Press, 1963, pp. 9-22.

In the following essay, Bovie considers the impact of Propertius on certain poems of Ezra Pound and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Little is known of the life of Sextus Propertius. He was a Roman citizen, and an Italian who like St. Francis and Raphael came from the region of Umbria. He was born, probably at Assisi, around 50 B.C., and died some forty years later after earning recognition as a lyric poet whose main theme was love. Propertius' father died while Propertius was still a boy, and his mother during Propertius' early manhood; so the poet seems to have grown up and followed his literary inclinations alone and unguided. The loss of his patrimony in the confiscations of 41-40 B.C. meant reduced circumstances, and Propertius turned away from the public...