attachments. The first of these, upon whom he lavished his fresh poetic vows of undying affection, was a lady named Plania (cf. § 14), whom Tibullus called Delia, doubtless because dîλos = planus, and at the same time suggests her qualities as an inspirer of poetry, from the divine pair born at Delos. Delia's standing is somewhat obscure. She was hardly a patrician, although the suggestion has been made that she was identical with Sulpicia. Neither is it clear that she was a libertina. Probably a plebeian, she seems to have occupied a dubious position. She had a mother living. Either this mother or some other chaperon is characterized as anus 3 and again as lena.* We hear also of a coniunx, but in exactly what sense the word is used is not easy to decide. For several years, beginning about the time when he first went away to the wars, Tibullus was her devoted, but not very successful, lover; and her figure dominates the first book of the elegies. To divert his attention from her fickleness the poet was for a short period deeply interested in a pretty boy whom he calls Marathus, and who corresponds to the Juventius whom Catullus has made famous. A second lady love was called by the significant name of Nemesis, though in exactly what sense she was to Tibullus as an avenging goddess is open to question. Certain it is that his passionate love for her met with but a poor response. Moreover, she was avaricious, and another lena appears as her guardian. This attachment did not last as long as that to Delia, and the poet probably lived to publish his second book, of which she is the central theme, before his sorrows and his frail constitution brought him to an early death. The Glycera mentioned by Horace (Car. 1, 33) as faithless to Albius may be set down as another flame of Tibullus, as she cannot be identified with either Delia or Nemesis. 25. Besides the Delia book and the Nemesis book, the Tibullus collection as it has been handed down to us contains, in addition to a hexameter panegyric on Messalla, a number of other elegies, some of which are evidently not the work of Tibullus, while controversy as to the authorship of the rest has not ceased to rage. For convenience this group of poems has long since been divided into a third and fourth book of the Tibullus collection, an arrangement which practical considerations have led the present editor to maintain. The third book is evidently the work of an unknown poet who calls himself Lygdamus, and who sings especially of his love for a Neaera. While critics are pretty generally agreed1 that the work of Lygdamus is in manner, meter, and thought inferior to the genuine work of Tibullus,2 a wide diversity of views has been expressed with regard to the personality of the author. Plessis thinks he was the older brother of Ovid, while their somewhat trifling and cold-blooded manner suggests even the possibility that these poems might have been a youthful work of Ovid himself. The many parallels between Lygdamus and Ovid in language might be taken in confirmation of this hypothesis, and especially the identity of statement as regards the birth of the two occurring in Tib. 3, 5, 18, and Ovid, Trist. 4, 10, 6: cum cecidit fato consul uterque pari, referring to the death of both Hirtius and Pansa in battle in 43 B.C.4 But Propertius also has many parallels with both Tibullus and Ovid," and this line of argument is inconclusive. Lygdamus may have imitated. Ovid, or Ovid have copied Lygdamus, or both have used a common original. Several other interesting identifications have been suggested. The question as to whether Lygdamus lived 1 Cf. Dissen, Vol. 2, p. 324; Postgate, Sel., pp. xliii sqq. 6 2 For a contrary view cf. Cranstoun, p. xxi. 3 Cf. Hiller in Hermes, Vol. 18 (1883), p. 356, who believes Lygdamus to have been a contemporary of Ovid and to have added 3, 5, 15-20 at a later time to his own elegy. 4 Cf. Gruppe, pp. 127-143; Kleemann: De libri tertii carminibus quae Tibulli nomine circumferuntur. 483. 5 Cf. Bürger in Hermes, Vol. 40 (1905), pp. 321 sqq. 6 Cf. Magnus in Bursian's JB., Vol. 51 (1887), p. 340; Lamarre, Vol. 2, pp. 482 before Ovid or after him is still unsettled.' So is the problem as to whether his name is a real one or a pseudonym referring to the first name of Tibullus, cunningly devised to lend countenance to the place of these elegies in the Tibullus collection. But a most reasonable explanation of the existing Tibullus collection would appear to be that all of the poems in it were written by members of the Messalla circle, and were sooner or later published together on that account. One theory is that Lygdamus may have been the editor. Certain indications of language and style argue that he was not a native Roman, and may have been a learned freedman.3 26. The fourth book opens with a panegyric on Messalla, which is so crude that it is generally agreed that, whatever adherent of that munificent patron was guilty of its composition, we must not lay it to the charge of Tibullus. (Némethy thinks it a youthful effusion of Propertius!) The next five poems are short elegies dealing with the love of Sulpicia and one Cerinthus.* In spite of all arguments to the contrary no adequate considerations seem to have been advanced to remove them from the list of Tibullus's own composition, and the parallels with his other writings (cf. Némethy, pp. 334-335) and general tone of these little elegies make strongly for their genuineness. They are sometimes spoken of as the " Garland of Sulpicia." The following six little elegies (4, 7 to 4, 12, inclusive ), sometimes called Elegidia like the preceding group, are evidently the work of Sulpicia herself, and are very interesting and unique in Roman literature as the work of a woman. They betray a warmth of 1 Marx in P. W., 1, 1327, dates the origin of the Tibullus collection between Tiberius and Domitian. 2 Cf. Aúydos and albus. 8 But cf. Némethy, Lyg., p. 29; Marx in P. W., 1, 1325. 4 Cf. 4, 2, Intr. 5 E.g. Bürger in Hermes, Vol. 40 (1905), p. 333; Postgate in Class. Rev., Vol. 9 (1895), p. 77. 6 But cf. Magnus in Bursian's JB., Vol. 51 (1887), pp. 262-263, for the view that No. 7 belongs to the preceding "Garland." feeling and a certain disregard of conventionalities that are noteworthy, and probably significant of the social tendencies of the day. The last two poems of the collection (4, 13 and 14) are of indeterminate authorship, but may be ascribed to Tibullus.1 A couple of Priapea ascribed to Tibullus are of doubtful authenticity.2 27. Tibullus, the country gentleman, was a gentle man. Even in his bitterest disappointment as a lover he could sing : 3 'Thy sorrows let me not unseal! I am not worth that thou shouldst lose a smile, A single bitter tear-drop should defile.' (Williams.) The subjective value of love he could try to reveal to heartless Nemesis thus: 4. 'This whole year have I lain Wounded to death, yet cherishing the pain, And counting my delicious anguish gain.' (Ibid.) And even for the sister of his cruel mistress that sister who had come so sadly to an early grave - he wept affection's tears: 5. 'and, as my sorrow flows, Unto that voiceless dust my grief confide.' (Ibid.) His sym Not that he habitually sits beneath the cypress! pathetic nature leads him to join enthusiastically in the joy of his friends, whether at some special occasion like the triumph of Messalla (1, 7) or the installation of Messalinus into the college of the Quindecimviri (2, 5), or at one of the regularly recurring festivals like the Ambarvalia (2, 1). He shares in the simple pleasures of the home-born slaves (2, 1, 23), encourages the merry games of the rustics (2, 5, 83 sqq.), and has a word of indulgence for the swain who goes home "right mellow," not for 1 Postgate (Sel., pp. 191–199) makes an elaborate argument against the genuineness of the former. 2 Cf. Hiller in Hermes, Vol. 18 (1885), pp. 343 sqq.; Teuffel 5, 254, 5. 32, 6, 41. 42, 5, 109. 52, 6, 33. getting to plead for gentleness towards the fair ones who might suffer rudeness from such a lover (1, 10, 51 sqq.). And while the course of his own love fails to run smoothly, he can express a generous wish for better luck to his more fortunate friends (2, 2). More than this, Tibullus prefers the quiet and gentle life and loves the peaceful world of nature best. "No other poet, with the exception of Vergil, is so possessed by the spirit of Italy, the love of the country and of the labor of the fields, and the piety associated with that sentiment." It is natural, therefore, for him to express these primitive sentiments of love of home and friends and native land, of reverence for his gods and devotion to the scenes where these rustic divinities especially held sway, with a simplicity and directness that are worthy of his themes. That he was master of his art, to be sure, has come to be generally recognized; and this was the same art that had produced the Alexandrian elegy. But no poet has succeeded better in exemplifying the dictum that the highest art consists in the concealment of art. He never obtrudes his learning upon the reader, as Propertius did, and in spite of many attempts to show a highly artificial structure in his elegies, the most patent fact about them is their utterly natural flow of a perfectly simple thought, oft-repeated, after the manner of one absorbed in the genuineness of his feeling. The deliberate estimate of the master Quintilian (10, 1, 93), mihi tersus atque elegans maxime videtur auctor Tibullus, is confirmed by the sober judgment of the present day.3 The relative merit of good poets is like that of oysters, a matter of taste. If one is bent on a fat capon, nothing else suits him. Within his field it is rash to assert that Tibullus is a second-rate poet, who just missed greatHis wonderfully pure Latinity, in the Augustan age, his perfection in handling the elegiac distich, and his success in ness. 1 Sellar, p. 239. For Tibullus as a poet of nature cf. K. P. H. in PAPA., Vol. 31 (1900), pp. xxxiv-xxxix; Geikie, pp. 85-86, et passim. 2 Cf. PAPA., Vol. 26 (1895), pp. v-viii. 3 Cf. Kirby F. Smith in Johns Hopkins Univ. Circular No. 6 (1910), pp. 26–31. |