ABSTRACT
Digressing with Propertius Before I explore the early modern reception of the Roman Deianiras I want to pause briefly to consider a poem by Propertius, despite the fact that the work of Ovid’s elegiac predecessor seems not to have registered very strongly in Renaissance England. His elegies were invariably published in conjunction with the poetry of Catullus and Tibullus, and although there were several editions available in Europe – including the famous if notoriously eclectic one by Scaliger issued from Paris in 1577, and the Aldine edition (Venice, 1558) that found its way into the library of King James VI and I1 – no editions of his work were published in Britain until 1697. Radical Protestants from John Stockwood in the 1570s to William Prynne in the 1630s objected to his inclusion in the syllabi of the grammar schools, and their warnings seem to have been heeded.2
