Dying in Perusia : A proposal for Prop. 1.

21-22

Their position at the end of the collection exposes them to view, their
conspicuous mystery seems a challenge to the sagacity of the reader1. Here is the
text and its translation by H. E. Butler, Propertius, Oxford (1905):

21
Tu, qui consortem properas euadere casum,
miles ab Etruscis saucius aggeribus,
quid nostro gemitu turgentia lumina torques?
pars ego sum uestrae proxima militiae.
sic te seruato, ut possint gaudere parentes, 5
ne soror acta tuis sentiat e lacrimis:
Gallum per medios ereptum Caesaris enses
effugere ignotas non potuisse manus;
et quaecumque super dispersa inuenerit ossa
montibus Etruscis, nesciat2 esse mea.

Soldier, that hastenest to escape thy comrades doom, flying wounded from the
Etruscan ramparts, and turnest thy swollen eyes at the sound of my moaning, I
am one of thy nearest comrades in arms. So save thyself, that thy parents may
rejoice over thy safety, nor thy sister learn my fate from the silent witness of thy
tears; how Gallus, though he escaped through the midst of Caesar’s swordsmen,
yet could not escape the hand of some unknown spoiler; and whatever bones she
may find scattered on the mountains of Tuscany, let her not know them to be
mine.

22
Qualis et unde genus, qui sint mihi, Tulle, Penates,
quaeris pro nostra semper amicitia.
si Perusina tibi patriae sunt nota sepulcra,
Italiae duris funera temporibus,
cum Romana suos egit discordia ciuis; 5
(sic, mihi praecipue, puluis Etrusca, dolor.
tu proiecta mei perpessa es membra propinqui,

1
“The final words of Gallus are so condensed and elliptical that they excite our curiosity even
more than our compassion”, says B. Heiden, “Sic te seruato: An Interpretation of Propertius
1.21”, CPh 90 (1995),161.
2
nesciat: a conjecture of Phillimore. The manuscripts have haec sciat, i.e. just the contrary!

1
 tu nullo miseri contegis ossa solo)
proxima supposito contingens Vmbria campo
me genuit terris fertilis uberibus.

Tullus, thou askest ever in our friendship’s name, what is my rank, whence my
descent, and where my home. If thou knowest our country’s graves at Perusia,
the scene of death in the dark hours of Italy, when civil discord maddened the
citizens at Rome (hence, dust of Tuscany, art thou my bitterest sorrow, for thou
hast borne the limbs of my comrade that were cast out unburied, thou shroudest
his ill-starred corpse with never a dole of earth), know then that where Umbria,
rich in fertile lands, join the wide plain that lies below, there was I born.

And now, the text and translation by V. Katz3:

21
Tu, qui consortem properas euadere casum,
miles ab Etruscis saucius aggeribus,
quid nostro gemitu turgentia lumina torques?
pars ego sum uestrae proxima militiae.
sic te seruato, ut possint gaudere parentes: 5
me soror Acca tuis sentiat e lacrimis,
Gallum, per medios ereptum Caesaris ensis
effugere ignotas non potuisse manus;
et quaecumque super dispersa inuenerit ossa
montibus Etruscis, haec sciat esse mea.

“You scramble to avoid my fate, soldier,

wounded at the Etruscan rampart.

Why do you roll swollen eyes when I groan?

I’m from the next unit.

I hope you make it – may your parents celebrate:

let my sister Acca know of me from your tears,

that Gallus, snatched from the midst of Caesar’s swords,

tried to escape unknown hands – but was not able.

No matter how many bones she may see scattered on

3
V. Katz, The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius, Princeton, 2004.
2
the Etruscan mountains, let her know these are mine.”

22
Qualis et unde genus, qui sint mihi, Tulle, Penates,
quaeris pro nostra semper amicitia.
si Perusina tibi patriae sunt nota sepulcra,
Italiae duris funera temporibus,
cum Romana suos egit discordia ciuis- 5
sed mihi praecipue, puluis Etrusca, dolor:
tu proiecta mei perpessa es membra propinqui,
tu nullo miseri contegis ossa solo-
proxima supposito contingens Vmbria campo
me genuit terris fertilis uberibus.

“What class I am and from where, Tullus, who my Penates,

you ask all this in the name of our long friendship.

If the Perusine tombs of our country are known to you,

funerals in Italy’s hard times,

when Roman discord hunted her citizens-

this was especially painful for me, my Etruscan soil:

you allowed my relative’s limbs to go abandoned,

you cover the poor man’s bones with no earth-

neighboring Umbria, below Perusia on the plain

bore me, fertile Umbria, productive land.”

Though critics quarrel about the establishment of the text and its
interpretation, they agree at least on one point: the close solidarity between these
two epigrams4. Evident in the form (ten lines each) as well as in the theme (the

4
Cf. J. T. Davis, “Prop. I, 21-22”, CJ 66 (1971), 209-13; W. R. Nethercut, “The sphragis of
the Monobiblos”, AJPh 92 (1971), 464.

3
soldier left unburied), this solidarity is further supported by several textual
echoes:
Tu, 1 > Tu, 7-8
Etruscis, 2 et 10 > Perusina, 3; Etrusca, 6
montibus, 10 > supposito… campo, 9
proxima, 4 > propinqui, 7; proxima, 9
sic, 5 > sic, 6
acta, 6 > egit, 5
ossa, 9 > ossa, 8

Such a careful weaving is an invitation to explain the two pieces as a

whole where they mutually interfere. We will first consider 22, whose situation
of utterance is clearer, since the interlocutor is named (Tullus) and the speaker
can only be Propertius himself, here affixing his personal seal, or sphragis5, on
the Monobiblos6. This Tullus is generally identified as a certain Volcacius
Tullus, nephew of the consul of 33 B. C., but the name, that reappears in 1, 6
and 14, could well be a pseudonym, and mask different persons in different
elegies. Admittedly however, the Etruscan origin of Volcacius Tullus, evidenced
by his nomen gentile and by inscriptions found in Perusia and Hispellum, fits
well with the Etruscan origin of the Tullus of elegy 22, as asserted in verses 3-6,
through the correlation si… sic, “just as… so…”
But, for that matter, it’s very surprising that this correlation, though
strongly emphasized (si > sic ; tibi > mihi ; Perusina > Etrusca ; patriae >
praecipue ; sepulcra > puluis), has been habitually overlooked by critics, so that

5
The sphragis (Greek for “seal”) is a way for the author to sign his book.
6
This term traditionally refers to the first book of Propertius’ elegies, as constituting a distinct
whole, which was first released independently of the other two books.

4
modern editions advocate the bracketing of verses 6-87, jeopardizing as a result
any chance to enter the poet’s intentions. But even those who, like D. Paganelli8,
merely imprison verses 4-5 in harmless parentheses, miss the meaning of this
correlation, for want, perhaps, of really and fully understanding the point of
patriae. We should first ask whether it is plausible that Tullus, whoever he is,
ignores the tragedy, yet so famous, nota, 3, of Perusia9, and if it is decent from
Propertius to assume such a thing. As the answer is probably no, we should
follow the suggestion implied by the superposition of patriae to praecipue, that
“the famous tombs of Perusia” represent a tragedy all the more intimate for
Tullus because he is himself native of this city, or at least he is Etruscan10. “Just
as the famous massacres of Perusia particularly affected you because you are
Etruscan11, says Propertius, so too did they especially moved me.” Does it mean

7
So, for example, in addition to H. E. Butler and V. Katz, P. Fedeli, Propertius, Teubner
(1994), G. Lee, Propertius. The Poems, Oxford (1994), P. Charvet (a French translation at the
editions of the Imprimerie nationale, 2003), E. Coutelle, Poétique et métapoésie chez
Properce, Peeters (2005), S. Viarre, C.U.F. (2005), S. J. Heyworth, Sexti Properti elegos,
Oxford (2007), and Cynthia : A Companion to the Text of Propertius, Oxford (2009), who,
like V. Katz, changes sic to sed (after Palmer).
8
D. Paganelli, Properce. Elégies, C.U.F. (1929).
9
It was in the year 40 B. C. that raged the war between Octavian and Lucius Antonius,
brother of Mark Antony. Several ancient authors attest that after the siege of Perusia,
Octavian, not content to order its destruction by fire and the execution of most of the
prisoners, offered to the manes of his father Julius Caesar for the anniversary of his death a
sacrifice of three hundred prisoners from among the most representative of the Perusian
aristocracy: cf. Suet., Aug. 15.1-2; Appian B.C. 5.48; Cassius Dio, 48. 14. 4 (“300 knights and
many senators”). Propertius brings up the subject again in 2.1.29, complaining about “the
overturned hearths of Etruria’s ancient race”, euersos focos antiquae gentis Etruscae.
10
Some commentators (probably wrongly) draw from v. 2 the inference that Volcacius was
not from Perusia: cf. S. J. Heyworth (2009), 101.
11
In other words, the weight of the sentence is on patriae (as indicated by its prominent
position in the verse), and not on nota. Grammatically, sepulcra has to be used twice: si

5
that our poet declares himself Etruscan? No, but almost, since after the
interruption of the distich 7-8, he presents his homeland, Umbria, as a sort of
natural extension of Etruria12.
That the distich 7-8 is actually an aside, this is indicated by the sudden
and unexpected change of addressee in a pathetic apostrophe still intensified by
the anaphora of the personal pronoun of the second person: tu… tu. The doxa
refers this double tu to “ the Etruscan dust”, puluis Etrusca, 6, despite the fact
that puluis is ordinary masculine, despite the psychological plausibility which
precludes that a quasi-Etruscan speaking to a native Etruscan would so violently
put the blame on the Etruscan land, despite finally the logical absurdity that the
dust of the dead (puluis matching sepulcra) could cover (or refuse to cover)
human bones, or even that dust in general could cover (or refuse to cover) these
bones “with never a dole of earth”, nullo solo13.
We must therefore seek for tu a more satisfying referent, but this requires
a detour through the elegy 21, which precisely begins with a tu. As we said at
the outset, the two pieces form a system, but it does not mean that they resemble

Perusina sepulcra tibi sunt patriae sepulcra. It must be noted that patria is not identical to
ciuitas (cf. ciuilia busta Philippos, 2.1.27); and one observes in the present elegy a clear
distinction, even an opposition, between Italiae, 4 and Romana, 5 (in connexion with ciuis):
cf. W. R. Nethercut, 467 n. 9, 472: “the turmoils of Rome… troubling the rest of the Italians”.
12
From the juxtaposition of 1.22 and 4.1 (v. 125-26 where it’s implied that Propertius’
birthplace was Asinium (modern Assisi)), V. Katz infers “that Propertius was from the plain
between Perusia and Asinium, closer to Asinium.”
13
The translators strive to mask the absurdity of the thing, not always successfully however,
as shows this rendition by P. Boyancé (Properce. Elégies, Les Belles Lettres, 1980): “c’est
toi, poussière, qui laissas étendu sur le sol le cadavre de mon parent; c’est toi qui refuses ton
sol…” It is wrong to neglect the value of nullo, an adjective which, in 1.9.23, for example,
amounts to numquam (see also the case, more complex, of 2.23.24: Jeux de masques..., 127 n.
74). So, "you forbid forever...": what is it otherwise that would prevent Propertius to scatter a
little dust on these bones?

6
each other. Actually their style and tone are very different, and even opposed14.
For example, in v. 4 of 21 the speaker unilaterally asserts himself, ego sum, as a
“member”, pars, of the same “army”, uestrae… militiae, as his interlocutor,
while in 22, 2, the friendship is serenely affirmed and recognized as an evidence.
More generally, while 21 brandishes peremptory injunction, forbidding,
intimidation and threat, 22 on the contrary vibrates with an exquisite sensitivity,
which goes through a rich emotional palette, from the warmth of a stable and
sincere friendship (v. 1-2) to the poignant bitterness of remembrance (v. 3), from
dejection at the scope of collective (v. 4-5) and private (v. 6) misfortune to a cry
of revolt and indignation against the main responsible for such a disaster, a cry
that breaks into tears at the mention of the unbecoming fate to which a loved
one, a parent, has been condemned, even after his death (v. 7-8). But it’s not
over, for in the final couplet the poet on the brink superbly tears himself away
from his sorrow to give us an edenic vision of his homeland, in a line that
literally explodes like a merry clash of cymbals, a smile after the tears15.
In sum, we are here confronted with a new instance of that fascinating
structure of opposition between an Ego Poet and an anti-Ego Prince, which
underlies as well the elegiac works of Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid, as Horace’s
Odes, Epodes, Epistles and Satires16. And we will see that in this light many
difficulties simply vanish.

14
W. R. Nethercut, 464: “Yet in spite of these harmonies, the elegies are basically
different.”
15
The magic of this last line, independently from its meaning and its lexical structure, can be
felt rather than explained: fluidity, dominance of the vowel [i], bouncing dentals, triple
repetition of [eri-s]… Contrast the last line of 21.
16
For the Odes and Epodes, cf. Petite stéréoscopie des Odes et Epodes d’Horace (1995-97),
and see http://www.espace-horace.org/jym/sommaire.htm; for the Epistles (Book I), “Horace
et Aristippe: l’épître I, 17 et les autres”, RBPh 83 (2005), 105-130; for the Satires (only the
second Book, it seems), http://virgilmurder.org/images/pdf/prpoesc.pdf.

7
 If it is indeed Augustus who speaks in 21 (Caesaris, 7: so spoke Julius
Caesar of himself in third person), we have no more to wonder about the identity
of Gallus: this man is obviously the poet Cornelius Gallus, who, after joining the
triumvir Octavian against Marcus Antonius, had been rewarded for his military
deeds with the prefecture of Egypt, before being suddenly disgraced by this
same Octavian, now become Augustus (26 B.C.). According to Suetonius, the
emperor had merely “prohibit his house and his province” to his ex-favorite
whom he accused of ingratitude and malice towards him. And when (again
according to Suetonius) Gallus, pursued by a pack of accusers and struck by a
decree of the Senate, had been reduced to suicide, Augustus wept over his death,
complaining that “only to him it was not permitted to limit the effects of his
17
anger against his friends . Unlike Suetonius, Propertius does not talk about
suicide, but about murder (v. 8). Or rather, it is Augustus, the speaker, who gives
this version, and we understand why, because the theory of suicide would still
accuse him, when he wants to pose as a would-be savior of Gallus, as implied by
the equivocal formulation of the verse 7:
Gallum per medios ereptum Caesaris ensis
where we should pay attention to the ambiguity of the preposition per
(“through”, but also “under the protection of”), and to the precise meaning of the
participle ereptum (“snatched away”, rather than having escaped by himself)18.
The whole responsibility for the crime would therefore rest on some mysterious
spoiler(s) (v. 8) who dared to lay hands on a man whom the Princeps for his part

17
Suet., Aug. 66.4: Sed Gallo… ad necem compulso, laudauit quidem pietatem tantopere pro
se indignantium, ceterum et inlacrimauit et uicem suam conquestus est, quod sibi soli non
liceret amicis, quatenus uellet, irasci.
18
I. M. LeM. DuQuesnay, “In memoriam Galli : Propertius I, 21”, in A. J. Woodman & J.
Powell (eds.), Author and Audience in Latin Literature, Cambridge, 1992), 66-70, rightly
comments the word: “snatched away, as if by an external agency, such as a god”… and
replaces it with eruptum: cf. S. J. Heyworth (2009), 99.

8
had done everything to save from death. A version that recalls strikingly the
official language of the time: “It’s not me, it’s the Senate who condemned him,
and his death breaks my heart”.
The speaker of 21 being now unmasked, let’s try to identify the person he
addresses with such a harshness. This is a very close friend of Gallus, a
“brother” (consortem, 1), in the symbolic meaning of the term, that’s to say a
companion, a fellow poet, and even a brother-in-arms, when poetry is militant
and endangers the lives of those who practise it. Catullus had given the example
of that metaphor about his friend Calvus19. No need therefore to take literally the
words miles, 2, and militiae, 4: the elegiac poet classically compares himself to a
soldier of love20, and Ovid may even call “brother-in-arms” a man like Cassius
Salanus, who is not a poet, but a rhetor21.
The poet we are trying to identify has shed tears over the death of his
friend, earning so the ire of the imperial executioner (who claims nonetheless his
entire innocence). This is what we learn in verse 3:
quid nostro gemitu turgentia lumina torques?
“Why are you turning away your swollen eyes from my own moaning?”
This sibylline verse becomes clear when one remembers the odious
comedy Augustus played at the time of Gallus’ death. He has killed him, and
now, relying on his supposed grief, he dares to come and join the friends of his
victim. It is conceivable that Propertius, if Propertius is the addressee, turns

19
See Catulle ou l’anti-César (1998), in particular the chapter 5 entitled “Le frère” (The
brother). It is no coincidence that Propertius in the elegy 22 discreetly draws from Catullus’
Poems 65 and 68, dedicated to his “father’s” death (cf. E. Coutelle 379); and the semper
amicitia of the first distich probably recalls aeternum… amicitiae of Poem 109.
20
Militat omnis amans, “Every lover is a soldier”, proclaims Ovid in Amor. 1,9.
21
commilitii: Ov., Pont. 2.5.72.

9
away from such impudence22. But is Propertius really the addressee? On the one
hand, it is certain that, as a poet, the author of the Monobiblos can be regarded
as Gallus’ brother, and that he took great risks in order to honor his memory in
several elegies, while stigmatizing the hypocrisy and wickedness of the
Princeps, but, on the other hand, the fact remains that he belonged to a different
generation, and that, if one seeks a poet who had been intimately linked to
Gallus, it’s of Virgil and no one else that we should think in the first place. And
precisely, Virgil bursts into the poem at line 4:
pars ego sum uestrae proxima militiae
so clearly reminiscent of the verse 35 of the tenth Bucolic, where the dying
Gallus exhales his haunting regrets:
Atque utinam ex uobis unus uestrique fuissem / Aut custos gregis…
‘‘And how I wish that I’ been one of you, and either / Guarded your
flock…’’23
On the Princeps’ lips, the word militiae, probably in the double meaning
of “poets society”24 and “political camp”, has been substituted for the word
gregis. After his crime, Augustus has the cynicism to make advances to Virgil:
“why blame me? I am crying just like you, and after all we belong to the same
camp.” And it is true that Gallus had joined the camp of Octavian, and that
Virgil seemed (seemed only) to support this same cause. However, the emperor
was not fooled by these appearances. He shows it here by the recriminatory

22
Torques for detorques, with gemitu as an ablative of separation, as is it clear from the
relation between the hexameter and the pentameter: “you are wrong to turn your back on me,
when we belong in reality to the same camp, the same brotherhood.”
23
Translation by G. Lee, Penguin Classics (1980).
24
Or Arcadians (soli cantare periti / Arcades, “Arcadians, supreme in song”, according to
Gallus, Ecl. 10.32-33). Mopsus-Octavian in the fifth Bucolic pretends to be a peerless poet, to
the point that he contests the palm to Menalcas-Virgil: cf. Violence et ironie dans les
Bucoliques de Virgile (2000), ad loc., and http://www.virgilmurder.org/images/pdf/qsize.pdf

10
question Quid… torques? and already from his very first words, where the
sarcastic tone of the verb properare tends to escape the interpreters who
understand it as a sheer physical movement, ignoring the slanderous hint of fear
of death it contains25: “You, who’re so anxious to avoid the fate of your friend
Gallus…”
Moreover, this charge may well have its source in the conclusive lines of
this same tenth Bucolic, where Virgil, having fulfilled his painful duty of
friendship to the deceased Gallus (extremum… laborem, 1)26, forcefully subdue
his grief, because, in his words, “the shadow is harmful to singers”27. Refusing
to yield to despair, he is eager to confront new hazards, and wants to die
standing up (v. 75):
Surgamus: solet esse grauis cantantibus umbra…
This attitude is properly heroic. But seen by the speaker of our elegy, it
becomes cowardice, fear of death (consortem properas euadere casum, 1).
It’s clear any way that the elegy was written after the Bucolic. Augustus
has read and seen through the subversive Virgilian poem that veils under the
allegory of love the too real tragedy undergone by Gallus. So, as a result, we
have to understand that the menacing orders which are notified to the Mantuan
poet in the elegy have already been infringed by him, and that only by a fiction
Propertius gives the opposite impression. Already, Virgil is guilty, already he is
under surveillance, and punishment is hanging over his head. Present from the
first line (“however much you hurry…”), the sword of Damocles reappears in
the third distich (again echoing the tenth eclogue: sic tibi… non intermisceat…,
3-4):
sic te seruato possint gaudere parentes

25
Compare this properas to the festinas at the end of Hor., Carm. 1. 28: http://www.espace-
horace.org/jym/odes_1/O_I_28.htm
26
For the dating post mortem Galli of the tenth Bucolic, cf. Violence et ironie…, 360-65.
27
In other words, it kills them. But who is hiding behind this allegorical figure?

11
 ne soror acta tuis sentiat e lacrimis!
“May your parents rejoice over your safety, on the condition that “the
sister” will not be able to guess from your tears what really happened!”28
In other words, if Virgil wanted to avoid the fate of Gallus, he had to keep
silent about what he knew, and to conceal the truth according to the official
catechism duly dictated in the last two distichs. But if we take literally the word
soror, this requirement has a ridiculously limited scope compared to the
punishment incurred, so it must be supposed that this mysterious person
represents somehow or other all the eventual readers, perhaps through one of
these “comrades”, or “brothers-in-arms”, experienced in the exercise of
cacozelia latens29, the message being then as follows: “Don’t expect to escape
my vigilance by writing your tricks.”
But let’s pause for a moment about the syntax of the last two couplets,
which gives rise to conflicting interpretations. Indeed many readers would link
them to the preceding verses, as an apposition to acta: the “sister” should above
all never learn that Gallus, having escaped Caesar’s swords, was the victim of
“some unknown spoiler(s)”. The problem however is that this interpretation
renders superfluous the word acta, hence the correction Acca suggested by
Scaliger30, a desperate remedy, it must be said, and almost worse than the
disease, for it covers it instead of treating it. But there exists an alternative both
28
The absence of the conjunction ut before possint (so P. Fedeli, S. Viarre, S. J. Heyworth)
leads to analyse te seruato as an ablative absolute.
29
The masculine under a feminine, as in 1.22.7-8: cf. infra n. 41. By Tibullus 2.6.29 ss., one
meets a no less mysterious soror: is there a connexion between them (ossa, 29 echoes our
ossa, 9; sic…quiescat, 30 our sic… possint, 5)? Could she be the poet’s muse (una sororum,
Ecl. VIII, 65), the verse 6 meaning then: “Weep if you want, but your muse must know
nothing of your tears, i.e. write nothing about that”?
30
Scaliger was recently followed by S. J. Heyworth, in spite of H. Tränkle’ refutation in
“Beiträge zur Textkritik und Erklärung des Properz“Arcadians, supreme in song”, Hermes 96
(1968), 565.

12
more radical and less intrusive, it is to place the distich 7-8 under the
dependence of the verb sciat, 10, which would thus govern two coordinate
infinitive propositions: Gallum… non potuisse and haec… esse mea31. It goes
without saying that as a consequence the reading quicumque (for quaecumque)
loses any authority32. The verses 7-10 would thus mean: “Let her believe33 that
Gallus, snatched away from death by Caesar’s swords, could not escape
unknown hands; let her know that all the bones she may find scattered on the
Etruscan mountains are my property.” Remarkable is the strength of this final
mea, which forms, with the threatening tu of line 1, the framing of the elegy. But
in order to fully appreciate this strength, one must fathom the implication of the
pronoun quaecumque, which, heavily picked up by haec, confirms that the
bones in question are not those of the speaker: if they nevertheless belong to
him, it is as he is the absolute master of the land, a new Creon who has
forbidden anyone to bury the corpses of his enemies34.

31
This syntaxis is advocated by B. Heiden, 163-64. Assuredly, it recommends itself neither
by its elegance nor its clarity (since haec, 10 may as well be feminine singular referring to
soror, as plural neuter referring to ossa), but the speaker anti-Ego always signals himself
through this kind of clumsinesses and stylistic “accidents”.
32
Apart from D. Paganelli, there are few editors who adopt the reading rares quicumque,
vainly defended by D. A. Traill, “Propertius 1.21: the sister, the bones, and the wayfarer”,
AJPh 115 (1994) 91-2.
33
Credat is to be extracted from sciat by virtue of zeugma.
34
Suetonius relates the answer that Octavian made after the battle of Philippi to a prisoner
sentenced to death who implored a burial: “the vultures will soon settle that” (Suet., Aug.
13.2). A. E. Housman, Butler’s Propertius”, CP 19 (1905), 320, was right when he ridiculed
the interpretation of haec as an antecedent of quaecumque in the traditional explanation which
understands mea in its most restrictive sense (“my own bones”), but he failed to wonder about
the true value of this mea.

13
 This shows how is off course the conception that these two pieces have no
political intention at all35. More than seventy years ago, E. Paratore already
interpreted the verses 7-8 of 21 as a charge against the triumvir Octavian36, but it
was easy to object to him that, far from assimilating Gallus’ murderers to
Octavian soldiers, these verses put them in opposition37. The elegy would
therefore be pro-Octavian and not the reverse, a strongly counterintuitive option
which commentators try to avoid with arguments that are often more nearer to
self-suggestion than to strict analysis38. Only through the just identification of
the speaker can the opposition between the Octavian troops and the “unknown

35
See for instance J.-P. Boucher, Etudes sur Properce : problèmes d’inspiration et d’art,
Paris (1965), 135, asserting the “caractère apolitique” of 1.21, “en harmonie avec ce que nous
savons de la jeunesse du poète”: and he quotes 4.1.131-42, as if the four Book were a genuine
work, and not a Machiavellian fabrication of the Prince: see on this subject “Le quatrième
livre de Properce, ou le Prince contre le Poète”, RBPh 79 (2001), 69-118. E. Coutelle, for his
part (pp. 428-29), interprets 1.21 as a sheer masquerade, and Gallus’ death as a
“metapoetical” allegory. It sometimes happens that metapoetics kills poetry.
36
E. Paratore, L’Elegia III, 11 e gli attegiamenti politici di Properzio, Palermo, 1936, 98:
“Tutto spinge a concludere che nel doloroso epitafio sia celata un’ accusa contro Ottaviano
come responsabile di tutte le stragi della guerra perugina.” In his Introduction to G. Lee’s
translation (c. supra N. 7), p. XII, R.O.A.M. Lyne salutes Propertius’ political courage in
daring “to recall the savager actions of Augustus in his earlier guise as Octavian”: “Our poet
has independence and bite”.
37
So W. R. Nethercut 468: “instead of equating Caesar’s troops with Gallus’ murderers,
Propertius contrasts them.”
38
W. R. Nethercut for instance (p. 469) argues from what he terms “the gratuity” of the
reference to Caesar (Octavian) at v. 7 to attribute to the poet an anti-Octavian stand, but the
mention of Caesar’s name changes nothing to the fact that he is patently exonerated in the
distich. It costs nothing to imagine, like J. S. Heyworth, 100, that “the unknown hands” that
killed Gallus could “quite possibly [be] a Caesarian contingent operating behind the front
lines”, but the text does not say that, or rather it implies the contrary (cf. supra, N. 37).

14
spoilers” really make sense: the speaker (Caesaris, 7) is the culprit, and he does
not want it known39.
But, it will be objected, how is it that the bones of the poet Caius
Cornelius Gallus are confused with those of the victims of the battle of Perusia,
since he died only fourteen years later, in 26 B. C.? An answer could be that
Gallus died on the Etruscan territory, a coincidence which prompted Propertius,
using a literary device current in the Augustan poetry, to “contaminate”, or
merge, the personal tragedy of Augustus’ ex-favorite with the collective fate of
the Etruscan people, although the two events were separated in time by fourteen
years. In the same way, Virgil, at v. 2, is associated with the besieged Perusian:
miles ab Etruscis saucius aggeribus
through the ambiguity produced by the preposition ab, which, albeit suitable to
specify the addressee’s Etruscan origins, with aggeribus in the sense of
montibus, as in Aen. 6. 830 (aggeribus Alpinis descendens), announcing so the
supposito of 22. 9, which characterizes Etruria essentially as a land overlooking
Umbria, is nonetheless habitually interpreted as marking the point of departure
of a supposedly desperate flight. Of course, this ambiguity is intentional.
Though it’s true indeed that Virgil did not physically participate in the battle of
Perusia, which doubly touched him as a Roman citizen and as an Etruscan, he
nonetheless very much concerned himself about it in his Bucolics40, and, for lack
of physical wounds, he had been deeply affected (saucius) by the atrocities
committed by the winners, before being again “wounded” by Gallus’ tragic
death (turgentia lumina, 3; tuis… lacrimis, 6; cf. extremum… laborem, Ecl. 10.
1).

39
B. Heiden, 163 approaches this conclusion, except that (ignoring the Ego Prince vs Ego
Poet dialectic) he thinks that the guilt is shared between the speaker and the addressee.
40
Essentially in the first, the third and the fourth eclogues: cf. Violence et ironie…, passim.

15
 Solving the riddle of the distich 7-8 of elegy 22 is now only a formality,
since we know the name of the man (the feminine is a transparent veil)41 who
forbade to bury the bones scattered on the Etruscan mountains42. Nor is it
difficult to realize that Volcacius Tullus, the apparent recipient of this piece, is
hardly more than a nominee and an alibi, a figure head behind which shelters the
great Virgil, now become, after the death of Gallus and the publication of the
tenth Bucolic, the first target of the Princeps. Indeed, the presence of the author
of the Bucolics is solidly asserted: first at v. 5, through the iunctura taken from
Ecl. 1.71(and reused by Virgil in Aen. 12. 583, again at the end of the verse),
Discordia ciuis43 ; then under the distich 7-8, whose imprecatory strength echoes
the formidable cry of anger of Meliboeus against the “godless soldier”, impius…
miles, who came to seize the land of others (Ecl. 1.70-72)44 ; and finally,
perhaps, at v. 10, whose dazzling vocalic smile seems to reflect the verse 49 of
Ecl. 9 (duceret apricis in collibus uua colorem). Moreover, it appears that
Propertius, at the moment of affixing his sphragis to his collection, has chosen to
associate to his own name45 that of Virgil in the form of an acrostich reinforced

41
All the more since the last vowel of perpessa is elided: the pronunciation then is
[perpesses], i.e. almost [perpessus], a possibility that the poet has generously left open to the
initiated (an initiation won by the patient effort of analysis).
42
nullo… contegis… solo: “you forbid that his bones be covered…”, according to the rule
Caesar pontem fecit.
43
About this echo, cf. W. R. Nethercut 466-67. Discordia, with a capital letter (so P. Fedeli;
E. Coutelle), is a goddess, the Greek Eris, who, in Virgil’s work, secretly merges with a
certain Labor improbus, another mask of Octavian:
cf. http://www.virgilmurder.org/images/pdf/labor.pdf
44
Cf. also Hor., Epod. 7. 17: acerba fata Romanos agunt.
45
S. J. Heyworth (2009), 101 signals the anagram of Propertius under PRO nostra semPER
amiciTIa.

16
by an anagram46 (in symmetrical response to the possible anagram of Caesar in
21. 10: [etRuSCiS hAEC SCiAt]): indeed, the initials in Proxima… Vmbria…
Me are those of Publius Vergilius Maro, and the sequence [tERrIS FERtILIS
VbERIbVS] strongly suggests VERGILIVS47.
What a long way since the first couplet, where, despite “a lifelong
friendship”, the recipient was paradoxically inquiring about Propertius’
personality, birthplace, and family origins! A mystery that dissipates if one
transposes the friendship in question on the literary mode, without detracting
anything from its depth and sincerity. At least twenty years separated Propertius
from Virgil, and it would not even be surprising that the two poets had never
met when Propertius composed the Monobiblos. But the young man (he was not
twenty-five) had for his elder a boundless admiration, commensurate with the
size of a peerless genius, and he cultivated the same muses, supported the same
cause, fought the same battle, ran the same risks. How could not such a perfect
communion of mind and heart deserve to be called “eternal friendship”? But if
Virgil, already famous, does not need to be introduced to his admirer, the
converse is not true. Hence this charming fiction (“You ask me who I am,
etc.”), which is really just a pretext to secretly dedicate the Monobiblos to the
Mantuan poet, in a tribute delicately refined by the insistence on a regional
neighborhood almost equivalent to a blood relationship (proxima, 9), especially
as Gallus, the friend so dear to Virgil, merges in death with that Propertius’
relative, propinqui, 7, which is probably his father (cf. 4.1.127-28)48. A merger

46
Like in Ov., Amor. 2. 6. 32-34 (acrostich P. V. M. associated with an anagram): noticed in
La mort de Virgile d’après Horace et Ovide, 190. See also Ov., Tr. 5. 12. 45-46 : Pace nouem
uestra liceat dixisse Sorores: / Vos estis nostrae MAxima causa fugae.
47
Incidentally, the Me genuit of line 10 echoes the famous Mantua me genuit of Virgl’s
epitaph.
48
Ossaque legisti non illa aetate legenda / Patris et in tenuis cogeris ipse lares,“You gathered
bones that should not have been gathered so young - your father’s – and were yourself forced

17
that occurs by virtue of the correspondences between these two elegies, who are
indeed sisters, but enemy sisters.

Conclusion :
These two pieces are only in appearance isolated from the rest of the
collection49. In reality, they are in perfect continuity with the previous elegies, as
already suggested by the recurrence of Gallus and Tullus through the
Monobiblos, Tullus being more particularly the recipient of the opening elegy,
providing thus a frame to the book. At a more secret level, which is the reader’s
responsibility to discover50, the unity of the whole is ensured by the
omnipresence of Virgil, particularly in his relationship to Gallus and in his arm-
wrestling contest with the Princeps. And if, as seems the case, the true speaker
of the opening piece, who bids farewell to life, is none other than the poet
Gallus, is it so surprising to find him dead at the end of the book? -JYM
__________________________________________________
Here is, finally, the text of the two elegies in the punctuation justified by
the above analysis:

21
Tu, qui consortem properas euadere casum,
Miles ab Etruscis saucius aggeribus,

into modest quarters.” (transl. V. Katz). There is no kindness in these words, as will
understand the reader aware that under the speaker Horus, the author Augustus is lurking:
cf. http://www.virgilmurder.org/images/pdf/propeng.pdf
49
B. Heiden 162 asks the good question: “Why is this poem [21] in a volume of love elegy?”
See also E. Coutelle, 423: “elles semblent n’avoir aucun lien avec le reste du recueil, consacré
à la poésie érotique”. The answer is, as we have seen, that this ‘‘erotic’’ poetry actually masks
a poetry that is resolutely political.
50
See Jeux de masques…, ad loc. for a tentative of deciphering. Although the book does not
analyses the elegies 21 and 22, it erroneously attributes the first piece to the speaker Ego. A
mistake now rectified.

18
 Quid nostro gemitu turgentia lumina torques?
Pars ego sum uestrae proxima militiae.
Sic te seruato possint gaudere parentes, 5
Ne soror acta tuis sentiat e lacrimis:
Gallum per medios ereptum Caesaris ensis
Effugere ignotas non potuisse manus,
Et quaecumque super dispersa inuenerit ossa
Montibus Etruscis, haec sciat esse mea.

22
Qualis et unde genus, qui sint mihi, Tulle, Penates,
Quaeris pro nostra semper amicitia.
Si Perusina tibi patriae sunt nota sepulcra,
Italiae duris funera temporibus,
Cum Romana suos egit Discordia ciuis, 5
Sic mihi praecipue puluis Etrusca dolor
(Tu proiecta mei perpessa es membra propinqui,
Tu nullo miseri contegis ossa solo):
Proxima suppositos contingens Vmbria campos
Me genuit terris fertilis uberibus.

19