Elegia quoque Graecos provocamus, cuius mihi tersus atque elegans maxime videtur auctor Tibullus.
‘In elegy also we rival the Greeks, of which Tibullus appears to me the purest and finest representative.’
Quint. Inst. Or. X. i. 93.
‘Tibullus might be succinctly and perhaps not unjustly described as a Vergil without the genius.’—Mackail.
‘Tibullus and Vergil are alike in their human affection and their piety, in their capacity of tender and self-forgetful love, in their delight in the labours of the field and their sympathy with the herdsman and the objects of his care.’—Sellar.
Quid voveat dulci nutricula maius alumno,
Qui sapere et fari possit quae sentiat, et cui
Gratia, fama valetudo contingat abunde,
Et mundus victus, non deficiente crumena!
Horace to Tibullus, Epist. I. iv. 8-11.