In these two lines Propertius is proud to say that his puella would not dismiss him for the fabulous treasures of some dives amator. The problem is caused by the interpretation of Cambysae as given in all the manuscripts; it is difficult to understand both as a genitive singular and as a nominative plural. This form of the genitive is not, in fact, recorded before Apul. Fl. 15.12, and the concurrent form Cambysis is even less common.Footnote ¹ Moreover, the Persian king Cambyses was not an example of opulence in Antiquity like the Lydian king Croesus,Footnote ² but of cruelty. The only passages where he is linked with the idea of richness are Apul. Mun. 26.13–15: Cambyses et Xerxes et Darius potentissimi reges fuerunt. Horum praepotentiam, quam ex opibus collegerant, lenocinium vitae effecerat celsiorem, and (indirectly) Juv. 14.328–31: Si nondum implevi gremium, si panditur ultra, | nec Croesi fortuna umquam nec Persica regna | sufficient animo nec divitiae Narcissi, | indulsit Caesar cui Claudius omnia, cuius | paruit imperiis uxorem occidere iussus, where we find apparently the same connection between Persian royalty and Croesus' richness that we read in Propertius' line.

Even though the transmitted text was accepted by several editors of Propertius' elegies, including Lachmann, Enk, Barber, and Fedeli, all the difficulties listed above have led several scholars to a conjectural emendation of Cambysae. Schrader's emendation iam Gygae (accepted by Baehrens, Rothstein, Hanslik, and Fedeli in his commentary on Book 2) is based on passages such as Archilochus fr. 19 West: οὔ μοι τὰ Γύγεω τοῦ πολυχρύσου μέλει, and Strabo 14.5.28: ὡς ὁ μὲν Ταντάλου πλοῦτος καὶ τῶν Πελοπιδῶν ἀπὸ τῶν περὶ Φρυγίαν καὶ Σίπυλον μετάλλων ἐγένετο […] ὁ δὲ Γύγου καὶ Ἀλυάττου καὶ Κροῖσου ἀπὸ τῶν ἐν Λυδίᾳ. But against this solution it is important to note that the Lydian king Gyges was likewise not a paradigm of wealth in Latin literature. Strabo moreover clearly speaks about gold mines, μετάλλων, and not about gold sands, which is the sense we would expect since flumina Croesi clearly refers to the golden sands of the Pactolus river.Footnote ³ Other emendations – such as Palmer'sFootnote ⁴gaza Midae accepted by Heyworth in his recent edition or Housman's tam invisi and imbres Danaae – have no paleographical plausibility and offer no explanation for the hypothetical corruption Cambysae.Footnote ⁵

What I suggest is that we accept D'Orville's emendation Cambyses for Cambysae, but with a completely different meaning.Footnote ⁶ There seems to have been no discussion of the fact that Cambyses is not only the name of a famous Persian king but also of a Persian river not far from the ancient cities of Susa and Ecbatana: see for example Plin. HN 6.39: flumina per Albaniam decurrunt in mare Casus et Albanus, dein Cambyses, in Caucasis ortus montibus, mox Cyrus, in Coraxicis, uti diximus; Mela 3.41;Footnote ⁷ Amm. 23.6.39–40.Footnote ⁸ It is true that this river called Cambyses was certainly less famous than the Pactolus, but it is also true that it was probably known in Rome from 63 b.c. onwards, when Pompeius' soldiers reached it during the war against Mithridates VI of Pontus.Footnote ⁹ There are also other passages where Propertius seems to challenge his readers to recognize a difficult geographical reference, or at least an uncommon one: see, for example, Prop. 1.3.5–6: nec minus assiduis Edonis fessa choreis | qualis in herboso concidit Apidano, where we find for the first time in Latin literature a reference to the Thessalian river Apidanus;Footnote ¹⁰ and Prop. 1.20.33–4: hic erat Arganthi Pege sub vertice montis | grata domus Nymphis umida Thyniasin, which is the only mention of the mountain Arganthus in Latin.Footnote ¹¹ A corruption from Cambyses to Cambysae is very easy to explain: perhaps a copyist, mistaking the name of the river for the homonymous king, tried to ‘correct’ the then inexplicable nominative into a genitive to be taken ἀπὸ κοινοῦ with flumina, thereby deleting the elegant construction of a name paired with periphrasis that we find again just a couple of poems later at Prop. 2.28.54: et Thebae et Priami diruta regna senis.Footnote ¹²

If my interpretation is correct, then line 23 simply means ‘even if the treasures of Asia [namely Persia, Cambyses, and Lydia, flumina Croesi] came back to our times’.Footnote ¹³ The construction of a land being referred to by its rivers is a commonplace in Latin poetry and quite frequent in Propertius too, as at 2.23.21: et quas Euphrates et quas immisit Orontes, and 3.11.42: et Tiberim Nili cogere ferre minas.Footnote ¹⁴ Furthermore, Asia, with or without further specifications, was a very common example of richness in Antiquity.Footnote ¹⁵ The challenging – but not impossible – reference to the Cambyses river was probably meant, in Propertius' mind, to become clearer once balanced by flumina Croesi in the second half of the line.