PREFACE
A few words are necessary in connection with the text contained in this volume. There are a number of passages in Propertius where it cannot be said that any certain emendation has been made. In such cases I have inserted the most plausible correction in the text, in order not to confuse readers of the translation. I do not wish it to be supposed that I regard such corrections as certain. In some cases they are only a pis aller. Propertius presents such difficulties to the translator that an apology for its deficiencies is perhaps unnecessary. No one is more sensible of them than myself. I have attempted, as far as possible, to keep close to the Latin, even in cases—and they are not a few—where from the point of view of style a free paraphrase would have been in many ways preferable.
H. E. BUTLER
London, 1912
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