Propertius was deprived of his Umbrian estate in the confiscation of the civil war. He applied his rhetorical education not to the courts, but to poetry. His first book of elegies to "Cynthia" won him the patronage of Maecenas and established his reputation as a passionate, witty, self-absorbed, and learned poet. The three books that followed invoke Cynthia, but also carry tributes to Maecenas, to Roman greatness, addresses to friends, and antiquarian fragments.
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