Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/143



the youngest member of the elegiac trio it is not hard to approximate the birth-date and establish the birthplace. With reference to his full designation it will suffice to say that the name of Sextus rests on fair authority, whilst there is nothing but a copyist's blunder and confusion of our poet with Prudentius to account for the second name of "Aurelius" sometimes erroneously given to him. As to the date of our poet's birth, Ovid tells us in his "Tristia" that he was younger than Tibullus, but older than himself, so that whereas with Tibullus he had little time for intimacy, with Propertius he enjoyed a tolerably close literary acquaintance. This would enable us to place his birth somewhere betwixt 54 and 44, and there is a probability that it was about