Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/169

Rh Much oftener he is (if we are to believe him, and not to set down his desperate threats and bemoanings to an appeal for pity) on the eve of a voyage, to put the sea between himself and the faithless one. There is strong reason to suspect that these voyages never came off, and that the poet's lively pictures of shipwreck were drawn from imagination rather than experience. But it was a telling appeal to herald his departure, picture his perils, and reproach the fair one with her indifference:—

and not less effective to return to the subject, after the supposed disaster had occurred, with a slight infusion of generous blame towards himself. There would have been infinite pathos in the elegy which follows, if only it had been founded on facts. But it was a dissuasive to Cynthia's fickleness, not the description of a fait accompli:—