Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/160

148 to Cynthia have become in after-time, and customary as it is to regard Propertius as the sympathetic friend of ill-used lovers, we fear that Cynthia had too much justification for her inconstancy in his behaviour; and that however tragic his threats and resolutions, his passion for her was much less absorbing and earnest than that of Catullus for Lesbia, or Tibullus for Delia. His own confession (IV. xv. 6) acquaints us with an early love-passage for a slave-girl, Lycinna, before he was out of his teens; and though he assures Cynthia that she has no cause for uneasiness lest this passion should revive, a number of casual allusions make it manifest that at no period was he exclusively Cynthia's, though her spell no doubt was strongest and most enduring. Who, then, was this lovely provocative of song, to whom love-elegy is so much beholden? It seems agreed that the name of Cynthia is a complimentary disguise, like those of Delia and Lesbia: and according to Apuleius, the lady's real name was Hostia, derived from Hostius, a sire or grandsire of some poetic repute, and not improbably an actor or stage-musician,—an origin which would explain her position as born of parents of the freedman class. It would be consistent too with the tradition of her accomplishments and cultivation, which we find from Propertius to have been various and considerable, as indeed they had need to be, to appreciate the compliments of a bard whose escritoire must have teemed with classical and mythological parallels for her every whim and humour, for every grace of her form and every charm of her mind.