Propertius himself says he was popular and even scandalous in his own day. Horace, however, says that he would have to "endure much" and "stop up his ears" if he had to listen to "Callimachus...to please the sensitive stock of poets"; Postgate and others see this as a veiled attack on Propertius, who considered himself the Roman heir to Callimachus. This judgement also seems to be upheld by Quintilian, who ranks the elegies of Tibullus higher and is somewhat dismissive of the poet, but Propertius' popularity is attested by the presence of his verses in the graffiti preserved at Pompeii.