Asked to name the great Latin love poets, today’s reader is likely to offer Catullus, Ovid, Virgil, Horace. Propertius, a successor of the first and influential peer to the others, has not been blessed by posterity. Yet at their best his poems match any of the period. They are poems of love, of desire, of insecurity and obsession: of struggle, too, as they resist the Augustan Empire’s attempts to turn its love poets into propagandists. The result is a highly refined irony, a subtlety of tone and humour that is unique. Patrick Worsnip’s translations bring out Propertius’ playfulness and his psychological acuity, reinstating his poems at the heart of Latin literature’s golden age.
Sextus Propertius (c. 55 – 15 BC) was an elegiac poet of the Augustan age, born and raised in Umbria. Little biographical detail survives beyond what can be inferred from his poems. He published his first book of verse around 30 BC, and at least three more in his lifetime. He was in the circle of the influential patron of the arts Maecenas. A successor of Catullus and rough contemporary of Vergil, Ovid and Horace, he is perhaps best known today through Ezra Pound’s experimental "homage" of 1919.
After reading Classics and Modern Languages at Merton College, Oxford, Patrick Worsnip worked for more than forty years as a correspondent and editor for Reuters news agency, with postings in Italy, Russia, Poland, Iran, Lebanon, the US and the UK. Since retiring in 2012, he has devoted himself to translation from Italian and Latin, and to magazine articles on Italian poetry. He divides his time between Cambridge and Umbria, Italy. He is married, with one son.
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