Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/183

Rh Tuscan settlers, its glory in the legend of the she-wolf:—

a sentiment which Lord Macaulay embodies in his "Prophecy of Capys:"—

The historic part of the elegy closes with a fine rhapsody, in which its author aspires to the glories of a nobler Ennius, and repeats his less ambitious claim to rank as the Roman Callimachus. In the second elegy of this book, Vertumnus, the god of the changing year, is introduced to correct wrong notions as to his name, functions, and mythology, with an evident penchant for that infant etymology which is so marked a feature in the 'Fasti' of Ovid. In the fourth—a most beautiful and finished elegy—the love-story of Tarpeia, if an early poem, has been so retouched as to make us regret that Propertius had not resolution to go on with his rivalry of "father" Ennius. It opens with a description of the wooded dell of the Capitoline hill, beneath