SOURCE: "Cynthia Prima Fuit" in Propertius: A Critical Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 1976, pp. 76-106.

In the following essay, Sullivan focuses on the personage of Cynthia, the object of Propertius's love in his poetry.

Gi; the Critical Problems =~ Sthe Critical Problems

In conventional regard, difficult to gainsay, Propertius' love affair with Cynthia dominates the bulk of his poetry before Book 4. The problem is to approach the material critically. In simpler days it was assumed that the first three books faithfully recorded the beginnings and the end, with all the joys and miseries in between, of a long relationship between a younger poet and a disreputable, talented, and cruel, older woman, even though there were those who contrasted unfavourably the contrived and Alexandrian complexities of Propertius' narrative to the directness of Catullus' love poetry.

Lachmann, Plessis and others even thought that they could give us almost a blow by blow...