Prayer to Proserpina and Dis Pater

Cynthia had been at the point of death, and Propertius wrote several poems about it; this is the passage where the illness has receded. The prayer is therefore not petitionary but restraining: not "give her back" but "do not take her back".

Haec tua, Persephone, maneat clementia — may this mercy of yours continue. The mercy has already been granted; what is asked is that the decision not be reviewed. This is exactly how one spoke to the gods below: what had been obtained was reckoned a stay, not a gift.

Nec tu, Persephonae coniunx, saevior esse velis — and you, Persephone's husband, be not willing to be harsher. Dis is not named at all: he is "Persephone's husband", a man identified by his wife. The name of the lord of the dead was best not spoken, and the circumlocution is not poetic licence but everyday precaution.

Esse velis, "be willing to be", is the same courteous formula as on the gravestone of Popillia Felicula (terra-funerary-001), which has ne gravis esse velis. With the powers below one neither demands nor implores; one invites them to refrain.

Cynthia will recover. In the next poem Propertius reminds her that the recovery has to be paid for with a vow.