Four books of love elegies addressed to 'Cynthia' — passionate, learned, and obsessive. Propertius pushes the genre to its limits, mixing mythology with autobiography until the distinction dissolves.
Start ReadingThe Monobiblos. Propertius introduces Cynthia — the woman who will consume his poetry and his life. Love as slavery, as sickness, as the only subject worth writing about.
The affair intensifies. Cynthia's infidelities, Propertius' jealousy, reconciliations, and separations. The Alexandrian style crystallises: myth woven through personal passion.
Propertius attempts to write about Rome and Augustus but keeps returning to Cynthia. The tension between public duty and private obsession defines the book.
The final book. Propertius writes aetiological elegies on Roman customs — then Cynthia's ghost appears to upbraid him from beyond the grave. The affair ends, but never entirely.