Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/145

Rh lake in the first passage, are doubtless the same which are credited with fertilising power in the second: the same sloping river (as the derivation imports) of Clitumnus, which a scholiast upon the word in the second book of Virgil's 'Georgics' declares to have been a lake as well as a river. The locale is of some importance, seeing that it enhances our interest if we can trace the lifelike scenes of Propertius's more natural muse to his recollections of the Umbrian home, from which he had watched the white herds of Clitumnus wind slowly stall-ward at eve, had heard the murmurs of the Apennine forests, and gazed with delight on the shining streams and pastures of moist Mevania. Scarcely less so, if we can account for the exceptionally rugged earnestness of his muse by the reference to his Umbrian blood, and the grave and masculine temperament peculiar to the old Italian races. In parentage, Propertius was of the middle class, the son of a knight or esquire who had joined the party of Lucius Antonius, and to a greater or less extent shared the fate of the garrison of Perusium, when captured by Octavius. A credible historian limits the massacre there to senators of the town and special enemies; but the elder Propertius, if he came off with his life, was certainly mulcted in his property; for whilst there are some expressions of the poet to show that his sire's death was peaceful, though premature, it is certain that a large slice of his patrimony had to go as a sop and propitiation to the veterans of Augustus. The poet's reminiscences of his early home must, like those of Tibullus, have been associated