A History of Roman Literature

by Harold North Fowler

CHAPTER X

TIBULLUS—PROPERTIUS—THE LESSER POETS

Roman society—The amorous elegy—Cornelius Gallus, 70-27 B. C.—Gaius Valgius Rufus, consul 12 B. C.—Albius Tibullus, about 54 to about 19 B. C.—Lygdamus, born 43 B. C.—Sulpicia—Sextus Propertius, about 50 to about 15 B. C.—Domitius Marsus, about 54 to about 4 B. C.—Albinovanus Pedo—Ponticus—Macer—Grattius—Rabirius—Cornelius Severus—Gaius Melissus and the Fabula Trabeata—Manilius—The Priapea—Poems ascribed to Virgil and Ovid.

During the last century of the republic Rome had grown from a powerful Italian city to be the mistress of the world, and this growth of power had been accompanied by many changes. The wealth of the governing classes had increased enormously. Greek art and Greek literature had become familiar in the form of original works and of Roman imitations, and with the increase of wealth and luxury the growth of immorality went hand in hand. The early profligacy of Cæsar and Sallust, and the love of Catullus for a married woman have already been mentioned. These were not isolated cases, but merely examples of what was only too common. In fact, the man whose life was pure was an exception in the latter days of the republic. The condition of society. Nor were the women of the wealthier classes better than the men. The Roman matron, who was betrothed at twelve and married at fourteen years of age, naturally found herself in many instances united to a man with whom she had no sympathy, and whose distasteful society she gladly exchanged for that of a clandestine lover. Divorces were numerous, and were accompanied with little disgrace. When Augustus established his power, he brought about many reforms in the government of the city and the provinces and caused laws to be passed to ensure the sanctity of marriage and of family life, but his success in stemming the tide of immorality was slight. To be sure, the life of his chosen friends and of the court circle in general was pure, and even perhaps puritanical; but the spirit of the times was so corrupt that even his own family did not escape. The immorality of his daughter Julia became at last so notorious that she was banished from Rome and ended her life in exile. Her daughter Julia resembled her in character and met with a similar fate. In the later years of Augustus banishments for moral reasons were numerous, but it was impossible to bring order into the life of a society in which immorality had ceased to be disgraceful.

It was in and for this society that the Roman elegists composed their poems. Elegiac verse had been employed in the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. by Mimnermus, Tyrtæus, Solon, and others, for the expression of all sorts of personal sentiments, as well as for political purposes; but in the Alexandrian period it had been appropriated almost exclusively to poems of love. The elegy. This Alexandrian elegiac poetry had been introduced at Rome by some of the contemporaries of Catullus, and in the Augustan period it attained a remarkable development. The Roman elegists imitate the Alexandrians, and, like them, insert in their love poems countless mythological allusions and even mythological stories. The fashion demanded that the elegist be learned in Greek mythology. Cornelius Gallus received from the Greek Parthenius a compendium of mythological tales to aid him in selecting proper allusions to the myths. The poet’s beloved is compared to Juno, Minerva, or Venus, Antiope or Helen; the lover gazes upon his mistress as Argus gazed upon Io; faithful wives are compared with Penelope or Alcestis, faithless lovers with Ulysses who deserted Calypso, and Jason who left Medea for another wife. These and similar allusions are mingled with figures drawn from rustic life or from war. The god Amor and his mother Venus play important parts in the poems. Amor transfixes the poet’s heart with his arrows, plants his foot upon the poet’s neck, makes him his slave. The poet sings of the beauty of his mistress, designating her by a fictitious name, but one which has the same length of syllables as the real name of the woman to whom the poems are addressed. The poet is usually poor, but offers his songs as the most valuable of offerings, and is filled with indignation if his mistress seems to care for wealth or jewels. No adornments are necessary for the beautiful woman, and love of wealth is disgraceful. The woes of lovers, false promises, faithlessness, the troubles of the lover who spends whole nights waiting at the door, the torments which love inflicts upon the heart, all these are repeated over and over again. So much of all this is conventional that it is hard to tell what part of the contents of these poems has any truth. Occasionally a line is evidently intended to give information about the writer, and in general it is certain that the poems were really addressed to some particular person, but how much of the feeling expressed is genuine, and how much mere affectation, it is impossible to determine. The details—the nights spent in wind and rain before the door, the quarrels or reconciliations, the voyages and returns—may or may not be founded upon real events in the poet’s life. Whether they are to be regarded as historical or not depends upon their context; but it is evident that many details are purely imaginary.

The three chief elegists are Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid. Of Ovid, the youngest and most voluminous, and one of the most gifted among the Augustan poets, it will be better to treat in a separate chapter. Cornelius Gallus. Somewhat older than Tibullus and Propertius was Cornelius Gallus, whose elegies were greatly admired by his contemporaries, but of which hardly a trace remains. Gallus was born at Forum Julii (Fréjus), in 70 B. C. He was a schoolmate of Augustus, commanded some troops in the war against Antony, and held the town of Parætonium when Antony attacked it. He was afterwards prefect of Egypt, but indulged in offensive remarks about Augustus, and showed his pride by setting up statues of himself in various places in Egypt, and having his name carved upon the pyramids. When he was recalled in disgrace by Augustus his creditors brought suits against him, he was condemned to exile, and his property was confiscated. Unable to bear his troubles, he committed suicide at the age of 43 years. His greatest claim to remembrance is his friendship for Virgil, who expressed his gratitude to him in the sixth and tenth Eclogues, and, perhaps, in the original ending of the Georgics. The elegies of Gallus, in four books, were addressed to Lycoris, an actress of low birth and loose morals, whose stage name was Cytheris. In addition to his elegies, Gallus wrote translations from the Greek of Euphorion. Valgius. Another writer of elegies was Gaius Valgius Rufus, a friend of Horace, who was consul suffectus in 12 B. C. Of his elegies on a boy named Mystes little remains, but they are spoken of by Horace and admired by the author of a panegyric on Messalla. Valgius also wrote some learned works, among them a treatise on medicine and a translation of the rhetoric of Apollodorus.

Albius Tibullus was born near Pedum, in Latium, probably about 54 B. C., and was, if the “Life of Tibullus,” contained in the best manuscripts of his works, is to be trusted, of equestrian rank. Tibullus. He inherited a large property, but lost the greater part of it, perhaps in the confiscations of 41 B. C. Apparently it was restored to him by Messalla, of whom he speaks with great affection. He followed Messalla to the East soon after the battle of Actium, but was detained by illness at Corcyra. He also accompanied Messalla in his campaign in Aquitania. Nothing further is known of his life, except his love for Delia, who appears to have been a married woman of low birth (libertina), and for Nemesis, who is apparently identical with the Glycera mentioned by Horace (Od. I, xxxiii, 2). Tibullus died about 19 B. C. He was a friend of Horace and was admired by Ovid, but there is no evidence that he and Propertius knew one another.

Four books of elegies are ascribed to Tibullus, but not all of these are really his work. Apparently the collection was made in the literary circle of Messalla, and poems by less noted members of the circle were added to those of Tibullus. Elegies to Delia and Nemesis. The ten elegies of the first book, addressed to Delia and to a youth named Marathus, are undoubtedly by Tibullus, and were published during his lifetime. The six elegies of Book II, addressed to Nemesis, seem to have been written several years later. They were left unfinished by Tibullus, and were published after his death. The six elegies published as Book III are by a poet who calls himself Lygdamus. Lygdamus. No poet of that name is known, and probably this is a pseudonym. Whoever the author of these poems was, he was a member of the circle of Messalla, was born in 43 B. C., and was familiar with the poems of Tibullus, Horace, Propertius, and Ovid. These elegies are addressed to Neæra, who was probably the poet’s cousin, and either married or betrothed to him. They are greatly inferior to those of Tibullus. They lack variety and imagination, and in technical execution they want the graceful charm for which the genuine poems of Tibullus are distinguished. The remaining poems ascribed to Tibullus are printed in most editions as Book IV, though in the manuscripts they form a part of Book III. The first of these is a Panegyric on Messalla, written in honor of his consulship, 31 B. C. This poem, which is written in hexameters, shows a lack of taste and a love of rhetorical exaggeration entirely foreign to Tibullus. Lygdamus can not be its author, for he was only twelve years old at the time of Messalla’s consulship. It was doubtless written by some member of Messalla’s circle, and included in the collection with the poems of Tibullus on account of its subject. The other poems of Book IV have for their subject the love of Messalla’s niece Sulpicia for a young Greek named Cerinthus. Sulpicia. The five elegies numbered viii-xii are by Sulpicia to Cerinthus. These are very short poems—none having more than eight lines—but they express genuine feeling in beautiful form, though without delicacy or reserve. The seventh elegy—of ten lines—seems rather to be by Tibullus than Sulpicia. Elegies ii-vi and xiii are apparently by Tibullus, and the epigram of four lines, with which the book closes, is of doubtful authorship.