Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/189

Rh by a late scholar and man of affairs and letters, Sir Edmund W. Head, to which we give the preference in presenting them to English readers. For "Arethuse to Lycotas" it has been suggested with probability that we might read in plain prose "Ælia Galla to Postumus," since in the twelfth elegy of the fourth book Propertius has addressed verses to the latter on his leaving his wife for an expedition against the Parthians. The question is unimportant. It suffices that the love-letter in the fifth book is a copy of the lorn bride's heart-pourings, very true to nature in its struggle between the pride of a soldier's wife and the love and jealous misgivings of a doting woman:—