As in his previous poem, Propertius is trying to put a stop to interference by someone wanting to intervene between him and Cynthia. Last time, Bassus was trying to get him to look elsewhere: now it is Gallus, who seems to be thinking of trying his luck with Cynthia himself. In both instances, Propertius’s argument is that she is dangerous and volatile: she will make both men’s lives a misery. With Bassus, Propertius made a lot of her compensating attractions: with Gallus, a rival, the message is that an affair with Cynthia is no fun at all, and there is no mention of compensating factors. Indeed, if this is what involvement with her is like, one can’t help but wonder why Propertius is so committed. This is not the only poem in which a whiff of masochism is in the air. Rebuffs to would-be meddlers in love-affairs occur in other poets including Catullus, and seem to have been a conventional theme.
Who Gallus was is not clear: the commentator W A Camps tells us that neither of two historical Galluses that we know of shared this Gallus’s aristocratic origin.
See the illustrated blog post here.
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