The Elegies of Tibullus / Being the Consolations of a Roman Lover Done in English Verse

BEING THE CONSOLATIONS OF A ROMAN LOVER DONE IN ENGLISH VERSE
BY THEODORE C. WILLIAMS
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY (The Riverside Press Cambridge) 1908
TO WILLIAM COE COLLAR
HEAD MASTER OF THE ROXBURY LATIN SCHOOL
Did Mentor with his mantle thee invest, Or Chiron lend thee his persuasive lyre, Or Socrates, of pedagogues the best, Teach thee the harp-strings of a youth's desire?
Albius Tibullus was a Roman gentleman, whose father fought on Pompey's side. The precise dates of his birth and death are in doubt, and what we know of his life is all in his own poems; except that Horace condoles with him about Glycera, and Apuleius says Delia's real name was Plautia.
Horace paid him this immortal compliment: ( Epist. 4 bk. I ).
Albi nostrorum sermonum candide judex, Non tu corpus eras sine pectore; Di tibi formam, Di tibi divitias dederant, artemque fruendi .
After his death, Ovid wrote him a fine elegy (p. 115); and Domitius Marsus a neat epigram. The former promised him an immortality equal to Homer's; the latter sent him to Elysium at Virgil's side. These excessive eulogies are the more remarkable in that Tibullus stood, proudly or indolently, aloof from the court. He never flatters Augustus nor mentions his name. He scoffs at riches, glory and war, wanting nothing but to triumph as a lover. Ovid dares to group him with the laurelled shades of Catullus and Gallus, of whom the former had lampooned the divine Julius and the latter had been exiled by Augustus.
But in spite of this contemporary succès d'estime , Tibullus is clearly a minor poet. He expresses only one aspect of his time. His few themes are oft-repeated and in monotonous rhythms. He sings of nothing greater than his own lost loves. Yet of Delia, Nemesis and Neaera, we learn only that all were fair, faithless and venal. For a man whose ideal of love was life-long fidelity, he was tragically unsuccessful.
If this were all, his verse would have perished with that of Macer and Gallus. But it is not all. These love-poems of a private gentleman of the Augustan time, show a delicacy of sentiment almost modern. Of the ribald curses which Catullus hurls after his departing Lesbia, there is nothing. He throws the blame on others: and if, just to frighten, he describes the wretched old age of the girls who never were faithful, it is with a playful tone and hoping such bad luck will never befall any sweet-heart of his. This delicacy and tenderness, with the playful accent, are, perhaps, Tibullus' distinctive charm.