What was it like to be in love in Rome? Th 22 poems of Sextus Propertius' first book of elegies (publisehed in 28 B.C.) offer an answer. Defiantly un-Roman in his devotion to love for his Cynthia and to his art, Propertius writes with a strangely modern voice - passionate, wry, self-scrutinising and ironic.