The Poems of Tibullus and the Elegies of Sulpicia

ON THE READING OF TIBULLUS

PROPAGATED THROUGH MANUSCRIPTS AND

PRINTED EDITIONS, AND THEREFORE ON THE

MANUSCRIPTS AND EDITIONS OF TIBULLUS.

Among poets of a similar subject matter, Tibullus has always been considered preeminent for his purity, ease, and a certain native elegance. He does not affect the untimely erudition that often causes boredom in Propertius, nor the shameful impurity of Catullus. You may easily recognize a man of liberal character and pleasant temperament, with manners of a more refined sort, and a mind informed by good instruction and imbued with the precepts of wisdom—fair, modest, and upright. You may see that he is also of a soft disposition and wonderful ease, averse to business, spending his time in honest leisure with the Muses and his loves, and no less prone to the affections of sorrow and sadness and the weariness of life. Alien to all greed for honors and fortunes and to ambition, he maintained the same intention and purpose in his elegies. He wrote not to become famous through poetry and attain the name of a poet, but for himself and for his mistress. Thus, he displays, more than anyone else, that simplicity of speech and thought, which is commendable for its truth and a certain native elegance. He is always the same to himself ) Scaliger, Hypercritics, p. 795: "He is almost entirely uniform, scarcely departing from himself, enclosed in almost the same circle." Therefore, it is no wonder if he was a favorite even among the greatest men. Thus, Cardinal de la Vallette, as he is called, valued him highly. See Balzac, in the letter inserted in the History of the French Academy* written by Olivet, p. 62, Paris edition, 1729, Vol. II. and retains the same love of leisure and the countryside, the same contempt for fortune, and the same form of manners and speech. The affections and cares of the soul, the heat and torments of love, suspicions, fears, joys, and sudden changes, he expressed more egregiously than other poets according to the truth of nature, since he used the very solace of these poems to delineate and soothe them. He is in this much more excellent than Ovid, who should appear to have followed the play of wit rather than to have rendered the feelings of the soul. Indeed, Tibullus seems to have written his elegies in the very heat of love, when his mind was most moved and he was burning with desire for his mistress; so truly, so vividly does he express each thing.