previous

Addressed to Tullus

1 What class I am and from where, who my Penates,
you ask all this in the name of our long friendship, Tullus.
If the Perusine tombs of our country are known to you,
funerals in Italy's hard times,
when Roman discord hunted her citizens
(This was especially painful for me, my Etruscan soil—
you allowed my neighbor's limbs to go abandoned,
no earth covers his poor bones)—
neighboring Umbria, below Perusia on the plain
bore me, fertile Umbria, productive land.

1 See poems 1, 6, and 14. In book IV, poem 1, Propertius implies his birthplace was Asisium (modern Assisi). Perusia (modern Perugia) was not Umbrian but Etruscan. Propertius probably mentions it because it was well-known, while Asisium was not. Mr. Johnson points out, “Octavian committed some war crimes in Perusia that would be vivid in the minds of Propertius and his first readers.”

PENATES
  • household gods.
  • load focus Latin (Vincent Katz, 1995)
    load focus Latin (Lucian Mueller, 1898)
    hide Places (automatically extracted)

    View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

    Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
    Click on a place to search for it in this document.
    Perusia (Italy) (3)
    Umbria (Italy) (2)
    Asisium (Italy) (2)
    Perugia (Italy) (1)
    Italy (Italy) (1)
    Assisi (Italy) (1)

    Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

    hide References (2 total)
    • Commentary references to this page (1):
      • W. Walter Merry, James Riddell, D. B. Monro, Commentary on the Odyssey (1886), 1.170
    • Cross-references to this page (1):
    hide Display Preferences
    Greek Display:
    Arabic Display:
    View by Default:
    Browse Bar: