The publication 1 of the fragment at first missing from the upper left-hand corner of the tabula Hebana (AE 1949, 215) so far confirms some conjectures which I made in a talk at Cambridge in 1951 that I am moved to print the briefest note about a point which does not seem so far to have been mentioned elsewhere.

Two localities of ancient Cyrenaica bore the name Βόρειν. The first, recognized by the ancient geographers as the eastern extremity of the Greater Syrtis, was a promontory and harbour which, from the evidence of the Stadiasmus Marts Magni, lay 131 stades (23·5 km.) south of the city of Berenice. It has been convincingly identified with the modern Ras Taiúnes, a small headland at precisely that distance from Benghazi. There is no evidence that this promontory was ever the site of permanent settlement in the form of a village or fort.

In situations in which understanding is disrupted or made difficult, the conditions of all understanding emerge with the greatest clarity. Thus the linguistic process by means of which a conversation in two languages is made possible through translation is especially informative. (Gadamer)

This article was prompted by a reading of Pound's Homage to Sextus Propertius, and, in particular, by a basic question: why might the argumentative, edgy poet Pound have been drawn to Propertius? What might he have seen in him? Some of the attraction, no doubt, lay in Propertius' slightly marginal status as a Classical author, part of the main tradition but on the edge. But it does not seem to have been the romantically agonized version of Propertius that Pound saw. Nor the merely clever, witty, light and playful Propertius – though he saw more of the second figure than the first.