Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/177

Rh After this, one should have said there was scant opening for reconciliation; yet Mr Cranstoun, with some probability, adduces the seventh elegy of the last book in proof that Cynthia, if separated at all, must have been reunited to her poet before her death. In it Propertius represents himself as visited in the night-season by Cynthia's ghost, so lately laid to rest beside the murmuring Anio, and at the extremity of the Tiburtine Way, as the manner of the Romans was to bury. Whether he was in a penitent frame there might be some doubt, if the ghost's means of information were correct; but certainly his testimony with regard to her—

points to his presence at her death and obsequies, and, presumably, to his reconciliation, prior to that event. Not, indeed, that the ghost's upbraidings testify to much care or tenderness, on her lover's part, before or after. She hints that she was poisoned by her slave Lygdamus, and that Propertius neither stayed her parting breath, nor wept over her bier:—

But the truth was, another and a more vulgar mistress had stepped into her place:—