Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vfjqv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T06:57:18.416Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Propertius 4. 1. 9

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

W. S. Watt
Affiliation:
King's College, Aberdeen

Extract

Most modern editors adopt one or other of two readings: (1) quot gradibus domus ista Remi se sustulit! olim / unus erat etc.; (2) qua gradibus domus ista Remi se sustulit, olim / unus erat etc. It is true that a large number of steps leading up to a temple is an indicationof its magnificence; cf. Ovid, Pont. 3. 2. 49 f. templa manent hodie vastis innixa columnis, / perque quater denos itur in ilia gradus. Nevertheless in this context qua is more probable than quot, in view of the local relative clauses in line 1 (quamaxima Roma est) and line 3 (ubi Navali slant sacra Palatia Phoebo).

Type
Shorter Notes
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The alternative quo (‘to what height’), with the same construction, has sometimes been advocated, but is less convincing.

2 In his edition of Propertius Book iv (Cambridge, 1965).Google Scholar

3 e.g. 3. 3. 15 f quid tibi aim tali, demeru, est Amine? quis te / carminis heroi tangere iussit opus? Such examples, and other cases of sense-stops in the last two feet of the hexameter, are conveniently collected in the ‘Index metricus et prosodiacus’ appended to Schuster's Teubner text (p. 177 of the 1954 edition).

4 I do not regard an quae at I. 12. 9 as beginning a new sentence.

5 And not to the (or a) casa Romuli.