Elegies Bk 3 Camps Book

This edition of Propertius Book III follows the general style and arrangement of Camps' editions of Books I and IV. Camps presents, without concealing difficulties and uncertainties, a fairly conservative but readable and coherent text, together with such annotation as may help the modern reader of Latin to understand the language and follow the thought of this difficult, much disputed, but very rewarding poet. While the book may be of interest to students and amateurs of Latin in general, the editor has had in mind the particular needs of undergraduates and of sixth forms. Of the twenty-five elegies which compose this book, all but two are related to the theme of love: but the treatment has become curiously remote and impersonal. After the first two books the touch is light, even cynical - except on the last two elegies, where the poet takes an embittered farewell of Cynthia. In his introduction Camps writes of the literary qualities of the poems and suggests some valid critical approaches for the modern reader.