814 P 11 P 11 O are, where known, some guide towards determining that of the hooks: i. 8 seems to have been written about 27 B.C. ; i. 6 not before 27 B.C. ; ii. 1 in 25 B.C. ; i. 8 after 27 B.C. ; iii. 1 (ii. 10) in 24 B.C. ; 29, 31, end of 28; 32 not before 28 B.C.; iv. (iii.) 17 (18) in or after 23 B.C. ; so 3 (4), 4 (5), 11 (12), but 20 about 28 B.c. ; v. (iv.) 6, 11 not before 16 B.C.; 3 in 23 B.C. For the evidence for believing book v. to be posthumous see Postgate, pp. liv., Iv. It is beyond our limits to discuss the style and idiom of Propertius in full. For details see Hertzberg, Introduction, pp. 47, sq. ; Postgate, Introduction, pp. Ivii. sq. (literary style), Ixxxviii. sq. (grammar and vocabulary), cxxvi. sq. tor metre and prosody; also L. Miiller s Introduction, pp. xlviii. sq. For ancient references to Propertius as a writer see Quint., x. 1, 93, where it is stated that some (not Quintilian) preferred him to Tibullus, Ov., A. A., iii. 333, Tr., iii. 465 (blandus P.), v. 1, 17 (blandus), Mart., xiv. 189 (facundus P.), viii. 73, Pliny, I.e. above, Stat., Silv., i. 2, 253, Vinbro Propertius antro. Prop., iii. (iv.) 1 , Callimachi Manes ct Coi sacra Philetae, in nostrum, quaeso, me sinite ire nemus ; v. (iv.) 1, 64, Vmbria Rom.mi patria Callimachi. But, as is well pointed out by Teuffel in his History of Roman Literature, Pro- |>ertius s debt to Callimachus and Philetas is chiefly a formal one. Even into his mythological learning he breathes a life to which those dry scholars were complete strangers. For a summary ac count of his relations to his predecessors and contemporaries see Postgate, Introd. ch. v. Coincidences with Horace are quoted in Teuffel ( 246, 2) ; with Catullus, M. Magnus, Fleckcisen s Jahr- biichcr, 115, p. 418; with Tibullus, A. Zingerle, Ovid s Verhdltniss, &c., i. 55, 98, 101, &c. ; with Virgil, Kettleship, Ancient Lives oj Vergil, p. 63, 64. There is no existing MS. of Propertius older than the 14th century. Up till the publication of Bahrens s edition (1880), theNeapolitanus(N., now often called the Guelferbytanus) was regarded as the best. Bahrens, however, maintained its worthlessness as compared with the concurrence of four other MSS. of his own xxxi. **!/, tuis^.-i/ner. journ. t-mi.,i.oovj, i aimer (iiermainena, iv, 43-it). mi contending merits of these MSS. have been examined by Solbisky (Comm. Phil. Jenenses, ii. 1883) with considerable care, and his conclusions as to the independ ent value both of X. and the consensus of I). V. are likely to be accepted. The editio princeps of Propertius is that of 1472, Venice. Among the chief editions may be mentioned the following, those with notes being marked with an asterisk : Scaliger (1577, &e.), *Broukhusius (2d ed., 1577), Passeratius (1608), "Vulpius (1755, 2 vols.), *P Burmann (and Santen) (1780), *Lachmann(1816; text only, 1829), * Jacob (1827), Hertzberg (1843-45, 2 vols.), *F. A. Paley (2fl ed., 1872), L. Miiller (1870), Haupt-Vahlen (1879), Bahrens (1880), A. Palmer (1880); selec tions, wjth introduction, Postgate (1881). Those of Miiller and Palmer are the editions cited throughout this article. It is impossible to cite the numerous pro grams, dissertations, papers, Ac., which have been published on subjects con nected with Propertius. For fuller bibliographies it is sufficient to refer to Hertzberg, Prop., i. pp. 248-59 ; Engelmann s Bibliotheca Scriptorum Latinorum (ed. Preuss, 1882) ; J. E. B. Mayor s Bibliographical Clue to Latin Literature (1875); W. Teuffel, Qeschichte d Rom. Litteratur (2d ed., 1882; Eng. trans., 1873; sec. 246 gives an excellent account of Propertius); Pauly, Real-Encyclopadie, i.e. " Propertius." Reviews of recent Propcrtian literature are given in Bursian s Jaftresbericht (1873), pp. 1447-54 (very meagre), and in the Trans. Camb. Philol. Soc., 1880 (i. 372-86), 1881-82 (ii. 226-36). The following translations into English verse are known: G. F. Nott, Book i. (published anonymously, 1872); C. A. Elton, selections in his Specimens of the Clastic Poett, vol. ii. p. 215 sq. (1814, reprinted along with the preceding and a prose version by P. J. F. Gantlllon, in Bohn s series, 1848, 1883); C. R. Moore (London, 1870); J. Cranstoun (Edinburgh, 1875); F.A.Paley, verse translations from Book v. with notes ( 1866) ; also a few translations by Gray (the poet) first printed in Gosse s edition, vol. i. (1884). (J. p. p.) PROPHET (7rpo^>r/T7/s) is a word taken from the voca bulary of ancient Greek religion, which passed into the language of Christianity, and so into the modern tongues of Europe, because it was adopted by the Hellenistic Jews as the rendering of the Hebrew ^33 (nabi, pi. nebiim). The word therefore as we use it is meant to convey an idea which belongs to Hebrew and not to Hellenic belief ; but when it first underwent this change of application the age of the nebiim was long past, and the Jews themselves had a very imperfect conception of what they had been and done. Hence in actual usage the idea conveyed by the word prophet has never quite corresponded with its his torical prototype; the prophets of early Christendom, for example, are not by any means exact counterparts of the Old-Testament prophets, and in general very various ideas have prevailed as to what a prophet is or should be, because up to quite a recent date the work of the Hebrew prophets has been habitually approached not in a purely historical spirit but under the influence of pre conceived ideas. 1 It does not appear that the original Hellenic associations of the word have had any sensible effect on these ideas. According to Plato irruew,, p. 72) the name irpo^rr/s ought properly to be confined to
- iterpreters employed to put an intelligible sense on the dreams
In the present article no attempt will be made to follow those speculations about the nature of prophecy which belong to dogmatic theology rather than to history ; but a brief sketch will be given (1) of the history of Hebrew prophecy (in supplement to .what has been already said in the article ISRAEL or is to be found in the articles devoted to individual prophets), and (2) of prophecy in the early Christian Church. To speak of more recent religious phenomena within Christendom which have claimed to be prophetic would carry us too far ; for them the reader is referred to such articles as MONTANISM, ANABAPTISTS. The conception of prophecy on which the Mohammedan religion is built has been sufficiently explained in the life of Mohammed ; borrowed, somewhat unintelligently, from later Judaism, it is radically different from that of the Old Testament, and when narrowly looked at lends no countenance to the statement often made, and at first sight plausible, that prophecy is a phenomenon characteristic of Semitic religion in general. 1. The Prophets of the Old Testament. The author of 1 Sam. ix. 9 tells us that "beforetime in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, thus he spake, Come and let us go to the seer ; for he that is now called a prophet (nabi) was beforetime called a seer." This remark is introduced to explain how his contemporaries spoke of Samuel. He was a " seer " (ver. 11), or, as he is also called (ver. 6 sq.), a " man of God," that is one who stood in closer relations to God than ordinary men ; " all that he said was sure to come to pass," so that he could be consulted with advantage even in private matters like the loss of the asses of Kish. The narrative of 1 Sam. ix. is so vivid and exact that not many generations of oral tradition can have separated the writer from the events he records ; it shows us therefore, at least broadly, what the word prophet meant in the early times of the Hebrew kingdom, and it shows us that it had acquired that meaning after the age of Philistine oppression in which Samuel lived, and to which his younger contemporaries Saul and David put an end. That this is the sense of the author, and that we must not suppose that the word prophet had merely become more common in his time and supplanted an older synonym, appears beyond question a few verses further down, where we see that there were already in Samuel s time people known as nebiim, but that they were not seers. The seer, with his exceptional insight, is a man of prominent individuality and held in great respect : when Saul asks for the seer every one knows that there is only one person in the town whom he can mean. With the prophets it is quite otherwise ; they appear not individually but in bands ; their prophesying is a united exercise accompanied by music, and seemingly dance-music ; it is marked by strong excitement, which sometimes acts contagiously, and may be so powerful that visions, or enigmatic utterances of the frenzied /J.O.I/TIS. But in ordinary Greek usage the prophet of any god is in general any human instru ment through whom the god declares himself; and the tendency was " to reserve the name for unconscious interpreters of the divine thought, and for the ministers of the oracles in general" (Bouche-Leclercq, Hist, de la Divination [1880], ii. 11). This probably facilitated the adoption of the term by the Hellenists of Alexandria, for, when Pliilo distinguishes the prophet from the spurious diviner by saying that the latter applies his own inferences to omens and the like while the true prophet, rapt in ecstasy, speaks nothing of his own, but simply repeats what is given to him by a revelation in which his reason has no part (ed. Mangey, ii. 321 sq. , 343 ; comp. i. 510 sq. ), he follows the preva lent notion of the later Jews, at least in so far as he makes the function of the prophet that of purely mechanical reproduction ; compare John xi. 51, and the whole view of revelation presupposed in the Apo calyptic literature. But in any case the Greek language hardly offered another word for an organ of revelation so colourless as Trpo<t>T)rris, while the condition of etymology among the ancients made it possible to interpret it as having a special reference to prediction
(so Eusebius, Dem. Ev., v., deriving it from irpo<pa(vw).
