# Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Tibullus, Albius

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TIBULLUS, Albius (c. 54-19 B.C.), was the second in the tetrad of the elegiac poets of Rome. As we learn from Ovid, he was the successor of Cornelius Gallus and the immediate predecessor of Propertius. The information which we possess about him is extremely meagre. Besides the poems themselves that is to say, the first and second books we have only a few references in later authors and a short Life of probable but not undoubted genuineness. We do not know his prasnomen; and his birthplace is uncertain. It is, however, a plausible con jecture that he came from Gabii. The year of his birth has been variously assigned; but 54 B.C. may be taken as approximately correct. This would make him about twenty-five when he accompanied Messala on his Aquitanian campaign in 29, and thirty-five at his untimely death in 19. His station was that of a Roman knight; and he had inherited a very considerable estate. But, like Virgil, Horace, and Propertius, he seems to have lost the greater part of it in 41 amongst the confiscations which Antony and Octavian found expedient to satisfy the rapacity of their victorious soldiery. Tibullus, like Propertius, seems to have lost his father early. He once mentions his mother and sister; and, according to Ovid's elegy upon him, they were alive at his death.
Tibullus's chief friend and patron was M. Valerius Messala Corvinus, himself an orator and poet as well as a statesman and commander. Messala, like Maecenas, was the centre of a literary circle in Rome; but the bond between its members was that of literature alone. They stood in no relations to the court; and the name of Augustus is never once to be found in the writings of Tibullus. It was doubtless this community of taste which gained the young poet the friendly notice of Messala, who offered him an honourable position on his private staff when he was despatched at the end of 30 by Augustus to quell the Aquitanian revolt. Tibullus distinguished himself in the campaign and was decorated for his services. But this did not rouse in him any military ardour. His tastes lay in quite other directions; and he always speaks of war with horror and dislike. At the end of the war in 29 Tibullus returned to Rome, and thenceforward his life seems to have been divided between Rome and his country estate, though his own preferences were altogether for the country life. Soon after his return he made the ​acquaintance of his first love, Delia. This is what he calls her in his poems; but we learn from Apuleius that her real name was Plania. Delia seems to have been a woman of middle station. It is impossible to give an exact account of the intimacy. The poems which refer to her are arranged in no chronological order. She appears now as single, now as married; but we do not hear anything either of her marriage or of her husband's death. It is clear, however, that it was the absence of her husband on military service in Cilicia which gave Tibullus the opportunity of making or renewing the acquaintance. It was not dropped when he returned, probably with Messala in 27. It was not a difficult task to deceive the simple soldier; and Delia was an apt pupil in the school of deception, too apt, as Tibullus saw with dismay when he found that he was not the only lover. His entreaties and appeals were of no avail; and after the first book we hear no more of Delia. It was during the earlier period of this attachment and probably in the spring of 28 that, yielding to his friend's earnest and repeated requests, Tibullus left Delia to accompany Messala on a mission to Asia. He fell ill, however, and could not get farther than Corcyra. In the second book the place of Delia is taken by Nemesis, which is also a fictitious name. Nemesis (like the Cynthia of Propertius) was a courtesan of the higher class; and she had other admirers besides Tibullus. He complains bitterly of his bondage, and of her rapacity and hardheartedness. In spite of all, however, she seems to have retained her hold on him until his death. Tibullus died prematurely, probably in 19, and almost immediately after Virgil, in order, as their contemporary Domitius Marsus pathetically puts it,
"That none might sing of gentle love in elegy's sad lay, Or gallant march of royal war on epic feet essay."
The character of Tibullus is reflected in his poems. Though not an admirable it is certainly an amiable one. He was a man of generous impulses and a gentle unselfish disposition. He was loyal to his friends to the verge of self-sacrifice, as is shown by his leaving Delia to accompany Messala to Asia, and constant to his mistresses with a constancy but ill deserved. His tenderness towards them is enhanced by a refinement and delicacy of feeling which are very rare amongst the ancients. Horace and the rest taunt the cruel fair with the retribution that is coming with the years, when they will exult over the decay of the once imperious beauty. If Tibullus refers to such a fate, he does it by way of warning and not in any petty spirit of triumph or revenge. Cruelly though he may have been treated by his love, he does not invoke curses upon her head. He goes to her little sister's grave, hung so often with his garlands and wet with his tears, and bemoans his fate to the dumb ashes there. Tibullus has no leanings to an active life: his ideal is a quiet retirement in the country with the loved one at his side. He has no ambition and not even the poet's yearning for immortality. His muse may go packing if it cannot propitiate the fair. As Tibullus loved the country life, its round of simple duties and innocent recreations, so he clung to its faiths, and in an age of crude materialism and the grossest superstition he was religious in the old Roman way. A simple, gentle, affectionate nature such as his could not fail to win esteem; and his early death caused deep regret in Rome. Tibullus was remarkable, his biographer tells us, for his good looks and the care that he bestowed upon his person. As a poet he reminds us in many respects of the English Collins. His clear, finished, and yet unaffected style made him a great favourite with his countrymen and placed him, in the judgment of Quintilian, at the head of their elegiac writers. And certainly within his own range he has no Roman rival. For natural grace and tenderness, for exquisiteness of feeling and expression, he stands alone. He has far fewer faults than Propertius, and in particular he never overloads his lines with Alexandrian learning. But, for all that, his range is limited; and in power and compass of imagination, in vigour and originality of conception, in richness and variety of poetical treatment, he is much his inferior. The same differences are perceptible in the way the two poets handle their metre. Tibullus is smoother and more musical but liable to be come monotonous; Propertius, with occasional harshnesses, is more vigorous and varied. It need only be added that in many of Tibullus's poems a symmetrical composition is obvious, although the symmetry must never be reduced to a fixed and unelastic scheme.
It is probable that we have lost some of the genuine poems of Tibullus. On the other hand, much has come down to us under his name which must certainly be assigned to others. Only the first and second books of the usual order, or about 1240 verses, can claim his authorship. The first book consists of poems written at various times between 30 and 26. It was probably published about 25 or 24. The second book seems to have been a posthumous publication. It is very short, containing only 428 verses, and is evidently incomplete. In both books occur poems which give evidence of internal disorder; but scholars cannot agree upon the remedies to be applied.
The third book, which contains 290 verses, is by a much inferior hand. The writer calls himself Lygdamus and the fair that he sings of Neæra. He was born in the same year as Ovid, in the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa; but there is nothing Ovidian about his work. He has very little poetical power, and his style is meagre and jejune. He has a good many reminiscences and imitations of Tibullus and Propertius; and they are not always happy. The separation of the fourth book from the third has no ancient authority. They form one in the best MSS., and are quoted as one in the anthologies of the Middle Ages. The division dates from the revival of letters, and is due to the Italian scholars of the 15th century. The fourth book consists of poems of very different quality. The first is a composition in 211 hexameters on the achievements of Messala; and very poor stuff it is. The author is unknown; but he was certainly not Tibullus. The poem itself was written in 31, the year of Messala's consulship. The next eleven poems relate to the loves of Sulpicia and Cerinthus. Sulpicia was a Roman lady of high station and the daughter of Valeria, Messala's sister. She had fallen violently in love with Cerinthus, about whom we know nothing but what the poet tells us; and he soon reciprocated her feelings. The Sulpicia elegies divide into two groups. The first comprises iv. 2-6, containing ninety-four lines, in which the theme of the attachment is worked up into four graceful poems composed for Sulpicia and Cerinthus alternately. The second, iv. 8-12 (to which seven should be added), consists of Sulpicia's own letters. They are very short, only forty lines in all; but they have a quite unique interest as being the only love poems by a Roman woman that have escaped the ravages of time. Their frank and passionate outpourings remind us of Catullus. The style and metrical handling betray the novice in poetical writing; and the Latinity is "feminine." The thirteenth poem (twenty-four lines) claims to be by Tibullus; but it is a miserable forgery. It is little more than a cento from Tibullus and Propertius. The fourteenth is a little epigram of four lines. There is nothing to determine its authorship. Last of all comes the epigram of Domitius Marsus already referred to. To sum up: the third and fourth books appear in the oldest tradition as a single book; if separated, they would contain only 290 and 373 lines respectively, as against 812 of the first book and 428 of the incomplete second; and they comprise pieces by different authors and in very different styles, none of which can be assigned to Tibullus with any certainty. The natural conclusion of this is that we have here a collection of scattered compositions relating to Messala and the members of his circle which has been added as an appendix to the genuine relics of Tibullus. When this collection was made cannot be exactly determined; but it was certainly not till after the death of Tibullus, and probably not till after Messala's. Besides the foregoing, two pieces in the collection called Priapea have been attributed to Tibullus; but there is very little external and no internal evidence of his authorship. The text of Tibullus is, on the whole, better preserved than that of Catullus, and still more so than that of Propertius. But it still contains many corruptions and several lacunae, besides the disarrangements already referred to.
The value of the short Vita Tibulli, which is found at the end of the Ambrosian and Vatican, also of inferior, MSS., has been much discussed. E. Baehreus maintains that it is genuine, and possibly an abstract from the book of Suetonius, De Poetis, a conjecture supported by the fact that even in so short a piece of writing more than one Suetonian phrase occurs (Baehr., Tibullische Bldtt., p. 4 sq.), while Schulze (Ztschr. f. d. Gymnasialwesen, Berlin, xxxii. 658) regards it as a mere rifacimento of Horace, Ep., i. 4, and various passages in Tibullus. E. Hiller (Rhein. Mus., xviii. 350) thinks it genuine, but assigns it to the late classical period, a view quite consistent with an ultimate Suetonian origin. It is as follows:—"Albius Tibullus, eques R. e Gabiis [Baehrens's ingenious conjecture for the MS. eques regalis, R. being the customary abbreviation for Jlomanus], insignis forma cultuque corporis observabilis, ante alios Corvinum Messalam ob ingenium [so Baehr., MSS. originem, others oratoreni] dilexit, cuius et contubernalis Aquitanico bello militaribus donis donatus est. Hie multorum iudicio principem inter elegiographos optinet locum. Epistulse quoque eius, quamquam breves, omnino utiles suiit [so the MSS.; Baehrens reads subtiles. The letters referred to are Sulpicia's]. Obiit adulesceus, ut indicat epigramma superscriptum " (i.e., the one ascribed to Domitius Marsus. These words seem to be a later addition to the Life}. Another moot question of some importance is whether our poet should be identified with the Albius of Horace (Od., i. 33; Epist., i. 4), as is done by the commentator Porphyrio (200​A.D.) in his Scholia. In the former passage Horace tells Albius to moderate his grief at the cruelty of Glycera, nor to descant in piteous elegies on her broken faith and the victory of a younger rival. It is clear that Glycera cannot be Nemesis; for it is a pseudonym, as the context shows, and Horace would, of course, have used the same pseudonym as Tibullus. If, on the other hand, Nemesis were a real name, Horace had no occasion to use a pseudonym. It is possible that Tibullus had another mistress, Glycera, of whom we know nothing further, and that the miserabiles elegi have perished; but this is a mere supposition. The Albius of the epistle has an estate at Peduin, where Horace conjectures he may be musing or writing. He is handsome, rich, and knows how to enjoy life. He is wise and has the gift of speech, popularity, reputation, and good health abunde, an enviable list of attributes, but certainly one which does not agree very well with what we know from elsewhere of Tibullus. The theory, then, that these passages refer to Albius Tibullus must be pronounced, with Baehrens, unproven; and the forma of Horace's Albius must not be used, as Schulze uses it, to subvert the credit of the insignis forma of the Life. Ovid, Trist., iv. 10, 53 sq., "successor fuit hie [Tibullus] tibi, Galle, Propertius illi, quartus ab his serie temporis ipse fui." In the preceding couplet he had said, " Vergilium vidi tan turn nee amara Tibullo tempus amicitue fata dedere uiese." Ovid, who was born in 43, would be only twenty-four at Tibullus's death if it occurred in 19. The loss of Tibullus's landed property is attested by himself (i. 1, 19 sq. ), "Vos quoque felicis quondam, mine pauperis agri custodes, fertis munera vestra, Lares. Tune vitula innumeros lustrabat ctesa iuvencos; mine agna exigui est hostia parva soli" (coinp. 41, 42). Its cause is only an inference, though a very probable one. That he was allowed to retain a portion of his estate with the family mansion is clear from ii. 4, 53, Quin etiam sedes iubeat si veudere avitas, ite sub imperium sub titulumque, Lares." Compare the passages quoted above and i. 1, 77, 78. Messala composed epigrams (Plin., Ep., v. 3) and bucolic poems (comp. the pseudo- V irgilian Catalepton, ii. ); but he was more conspicuous as a patron than as a poet. On his circle and that of Maecenas, see Teuffel, Gesch. der romischen Literatur, 4th ed., p. 431 (vol. i. p. 389 of the Eng. transl.). Other members of the circle were Messala's brother, Pedius Publicola, jEmilius Macer (probably the Macer addressed in ii. 6), Valgius Rufus, Lygdamus, Sulpicia, and others, and even Ovid to a certain extent (Ov., Pont., i. 7, 28 sq.; Trist., iv. 4, 27 sq. ). Tibullus was Messala's contubernalis in the Aquitanian war ( Vita Tib. and Tib., i. 7, 9 sq., a poem com posed for Messala's triumph). It should be stated that the date of the Aquitanian campaign is still undetermined. It has been assigned to 30, 29, and 28. He received militaria dona ( Vita); Baehrens unkindly suggests it was for purely poetical services (Tib. Bl., p. 15). Tibullus's dislike of war is always coining to the surface (e.g., i. 3; i. 10), and so also his love of quiet and retirement (i. 1; ii. 1; 3, 1 sq.). Apuleius (Apol., 10), "accusent Tibullum . . . quod ei sit Plania in animo, Delia in versu "; this is the most probable form of the name, Delia (drjXos) being a translation of Plania. As regards her station, it should be noticed that she was not entitled to wear the stola, the dress of Roman matrons (i. 6, 68). Her husband is mentioned as absent (i. 2, 67 sq.). She eludes the custodes placed over her (i. 2, 15, and 6, 7). Tibullus's suit was favoured by Delia's mother, of whom he speaks in very affectionate terms (i. 6, 57 sq.). For Tibullus's illness at Corcyra, see i. 3, 1 sq., 55 sq. The fifth elegy was written during estrangement (discidium) and the sixth after the return of the husband and during Delia's double infidelity. On the difficulty of "harmonizing" the Delia elegies, see F. Leo (in Kiessling and Wilamowitz-Mollendorfs Philol. Unters., ii. pp. 19-23), who is, however, too sceptical. Any other attachments that Tibullus formed (such as the supposed one for Glycera) must have fallen between the end of the Delia and the beginning of the Nemesis connexion. Ovid, writing at the time of Tibullus's death (Am., iii. 9, 31), says " Sic Nemesis loiigum, sic Delia, nomen habebunt, altera cura recens, altera primus amor." Nemesis is the sub ject of book ii. 3, 4, 6. The mention of a lena (ii. 6) settles her position. The connexion had lasted a year when ii. 5 was written (see ver. 109). It is worth noticing that Martial selects Nemesis as the source of Tibullus's reputation, "fama est arguti Nemesis lasciva Tibulli" (Epigr., viii. 73, 7); compare xiv. 193, "ussit amatorem Nemesis lasciva Tibullum, in tota iuvit quern nihil esse domo," where, however, the second line is taken from one of the Delia elegies^ Ovid, Amores, iii. 9, 58, "me tenuit moriens deficiente manu." The point of this can only be seen by reference to Tib., i. 1, 60, where Delia is addressed, " te teneam moriens deficiente manu." The epigram of Domitius Marsus on his death is as follows: " Te quoque, Vergilio comitem, non sequa, Tibulle, Mors iuvenem campos misit ad Elysios, ne foret aut elegis molles qui fleret amores aut caueret forti regia bella pede." Tibullus condemns the rough handling which the inamorata often suffered from her Roman lover, e.g., i. 10, 59-60 "A! lapis est ferrumque, suam quicumque puellam verberat; e caelo deripit ille deos." The tenderness of the passage paraphrased above (ii. 6, 41) is perhaps unmatched in ancient poetry: " desino, ne doming luctus renoventur acerbi. Non ego sum tanti ploret ut ilia semel." His love for a rustic life and rustic worship appears throughout whole poems, as in i. 1 and ii. 1, 2. Of his poetry he says (ii. 4, 19), "Ad dominam faciles aditus per carmin.i quaero; ite procul, MUSPB, si nihil ista valent." Specimens of Tibullus at his best may be found in i. 1, 3, 89-94; 5, 19-36; 9, 45-68; ii. 6. Quintilian says (List., x. 1, 93), "Elegia quoque Grtecos provocamus, cuius mihi tersus atque elegans maxime videtur auctor Tibullus; sunt qui Propertium malint; Ovidius utroque lascivior sicut durior Gallus." Ovid (Am., I.e.) well calls him cultus, Martial argutus, " fine-toned. " A short but not inadequate account of Tibullus's prosody is given by L. Mueller in his introduction to Tibullus (Catullus, Tibullus, und Propertius, Leipsic, 1880). Catullus and Tibullus lengthen a short vowel before sp and fr; Propertius always keeps it short in similar conjunctions, even where's is followed by two consonants, as in striges. Catullus, and in three cases Tibullus, allow a trisyllabic verb to close the pentameter. Propertius never permits himself this liberty, al though in his earlier poems he has as many trisyllabic endings as Tibullus. The chronology of the first book is discussed amongst others by Baehrens (Tib. BL, pp. 12-24). But the data do not admit in all cases of his precise determinations. Baehrens and Hiller (Hermes, xviii. 353) agree that the second book was post humous. If it had been known to Ovid when he wrote his elegy on the poet's death, it seems certain that he would have quoted from it. Hiller assigns 2 B.C. as an inferior limit, by which time Ov., Ars Am., iii. 3, 535 sq., must have been written. Amongst the "disarranged poems" are i. 1, 4, 6 and ii. 3, 5. Proposed re arrangements of them may be found in Killer's Tibullus (1885). Charisius (pp. 66 and 105) quotes part of a hexameter which is not found in the extant poems of Tibullu?.
The Tibullian authorship of book iii. has long ago been surrendered by scholars. Its latest defenders have been Fuss (De Elegg. Libro quern Lygdami esse putant, Miinster, 1867) and the English translator, J. Cranstoun. It has been suggested that Lyydamus (iry5os, white marble) is a Grecizing of Albius, some relation of Tibullus (compare Hiller, Hermes, xviii. 353, n. 2); and this is possible. Gruppe's long-exploded theory that Ovid was the author has been recently revived by J. Kleeman (De Libri III. Carminibus quse, Tibulli Nomine circumferuntur, Strasburg, 1876). Considerable difficulty is caused by iii. 5, 15-20, which contains agreements with three passages of Ovid, Ars Am., ii. 669 sq.; Tr., iv. 10, 6: "cum ceeidit fato consul uterque pari" (Lygdamus and Ovid using word for word the same expression for the year of their birth, the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa); and Am., xi. 14, 23 sq., which are much too close to be accidental, and in which the theory that Ovid was the imitator is excluded by the fact that the lines are much more appropriate to their surroundings in Ovid than in Lygdamus. In consequence Baehrens ( Tib. Bl., 40) regards the poem as written after 13 A.D., the date of the Tristia, while Hiller (I.e., p. 359) regards the lines as a later addition by Lygdamus himself. In either case it would be published after 13. The line quoted above may have obtained proverbial currency before either of the passages was written, as the death of both consuls in one year would have impressed the Roman imagination as powerfully as the coincident deaths of Adams and Jefferson did the American. In that case no part of book iii. need be later than the Christian era. For Lygdamus's imitations of Tibullus, see Gruppe, Die romische Elegie, i. 112 sq. There are resemblances between the pseudo-Tibullus and the Catalepton (Baehr., op. cit., p. 52). The view of Baehrens (Tib. Bldtt., 49) and others that iii. and iv. originally formed one book may now be considered established, in spite of Birt's objections (Das antike Buchwesen, 426 sq. ); and Hiller in his edition prints them as one. They were published some time after book ii., probably after the death of Messala (Baehrens, op. cit., 48, adds, "and of his son Messalinus ). Further determination of the date is impossible. We do not know when they were added to the genuine poems of Tibullus; but it was prob ably before the Life was written. Most scholars since Lachmanu (Kl. Schr., ii. 149) have condemned the "Panegyric on Messala." It is an inflated and at the same time tasteless declamation, entirely devoid of poetical merit. The language is often absurdly exaggerated, e.g., 190 sq. The author himself seems to be conscious of his own deficiencies (1 sq., 177 sq.). All that we know about him is that he, like so many of his contemporaries, had been reduced to poverty by the loss of his estates (181 sq.). The date is fixed by 121 sq. Sulpicia was the daughter of Servius Sulpicius (iv. 10, 4), and she seems to have been under the tutelage of Messala (cf. 14, 5-8), her uncle by marriage (Haupt, Hermes, iv. 33 sq.). Cerinthus is a real name. He was probably a Greek (Baehr., p. 41 and note). He is not to be identified with the Cornutus addressed in Tib., ii. 2, 3. Gruppe (op. cit., 27) and Teuffel (Studien, 367) attri bute iv. 2-6 to Tibullus himself; but the style is different, and it is best to answer the question as Baehrens does (p. 46) with a non liquet. For Sulpicia's style and its feminine Latinity, compare Gruppe (op. cit., i. 49 sq.). The direct ascription of iv. 13 (verse 13 " nunc licet e caelo mittatur arnica Tibullo ") to Tibullus prob ably led to its being included in the collection. Later on, it and ​the epigram together caused the addition of the pseudo-Tibulliana to the genuine works. Although not suspected till recently, it is unquestionably spurious; see the examination by Postgate (Journ. of Phil., ix. 280 sq. ). The authorship of the two Priapea (one an epigram and the other a longer piece in iambics) is discussed by Hiller (Hermes, xviii. 343-9). His conclusions are that, as regards the iambics, the theory that Tibullus was its author, though from the nature of the case it does not admit of complete disproof, rests upon the slightest of foundations, and, as regards the epigram, that the hypothesis of a Tibullian authorship is quite inadmissible.
The text of Tibullus is in a much better condition than it was in Lachmann's time, thanks to the recent discovery of new MSS. by E. Baehrens. Of these the Ambrosianus (A), of date about 1374, and the Vaticanus (V), end of the 14th or beginning of the 15th century, agree so closely that they can be referred to an original extant in the early part of the 12th or 13th century but long since lost. A third is the Guelferbytanus (G), written in Lombard characters, but on parchment of the beginning of the 15th century. Baehrens, who attaches great importance to the original readings of this codex, considers it a faithful copy of a 10th or llth century MS. Besides these we have a number of extracts from Tibullus in the Florilegium Parisinum, an anthology from various Latin writers which probably dates back to the llth century, and which we have from two MSS. at Paris (7647 and 17903); see Meyncke, Rhein. Mus., xxv. 369 sq. Baehrens considers that these excerpta Parisina and G are closely con nected, and that their original and that of A and V were both descended from a more ancient MS., which he calls O, but which was still full of corruptions. The so-called Excerpta Frisingensia, preserved in an 11th-century MS. (now at Munich), but unfortunately very few in number, are extracted from a much better MS. than O. Still better was the Fragmentum Cuiacianum, which we know only from Scaliger's collation (in the library at Leyden), and which is to be carefully distinguished from the codex Cuiacianus, a late MS. containing Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius, and still extant. It only contained from iii. 4, 65 to the end. The codices which Lachmann used are later than all the foregoing and full of interpolations. Baehrens's estimate of the MS. authorities for Tibullus has not been accepted in all its details. In particular his high estimate of G has been disputed by Leo, op. cit., p. 3; Rothstein, De Tibulli Codicibus, p. 67 sq. (who also endeavours to raise Lachmaun's MSS. to an inde pendent position again); and others. B. Leonhard, in a careful disserta tion, De Codicibus Tibullianis Capita Tria (Munich, 1882), agrees with Baehrens in the main, though his pedigree of the MSS. (p. 53) is more elaborate.
Editions.—The first two editions of Tibullus and the pseudo-Tibulliana are that with Catullus, Propertius, and the Silvse of Statins by Vindelin de Spira (Venice, 1472) and one of Tibullus separately by Florentius de Argentina, prob ably printed in the same year. Compare Huschke, Tibullus, Praef., vi. sq., xxiii. sq. Amongst others we may mention those by Scaliger (with Catullus and Propertius, Paris, 1577, 1582, &c.), Broukhuys (Amsterdam, 1708), Vulpius (Padua, 1749), Heyne (Leipsic, 1817, 4th ed. by Wunderlich; with supplement by Dissen, 1819), Huschke (Leipsic, 1819, 2 vols.), Lachmann (Berlin, 1829, the first critical edition), Dissen (Gottingen, 1835). The most important edition with critical apparatus is that of E. Baehrens (Leipsic, 1878). The most recent edition, with critical introduction and index, is E. Hiller's (Leipsic, 1885). Recent texts are those of L. Mueller (Leipsic, 1880; also with Catullus and Propertius) and Haupt-Vahlen (Leipsic, 1885). There is no good recent comment ary on Tibullus; we have to fall back on Heyne and Dissen. That by B. Fabricius (Berlin, 1SS1) does not even comprise all the poems. Some contributions are made to the subject in F. Leo's paper in Kiessling's and WilamowitzMoellendorfs Philol. Unters., ii. p. 3sq., and by J. Vahlen in the Monatsberichte of the Berlin Academy, 1878, pp. 343-356. For fuller bibliographies, see Engelmann's Bibliotheca Scriptorum Latinorum (ed. Preuss, 1882) and J. E. B. Mayor's Bibliographical Clue to Latin Literature (1875). For the older editions, see the preface to Huschke's. There is an excellent account of Tibullus in W. S. Teuffcl's Gesch. d. romisch. Literatur (4th ed., L. Schwabe, 1882). Those in the Eng. tr. and Pauly's Real-Encyklopddie are antiquated. The following translations into English verse are known, by Dart (London, 1720), Grainger (London, 1739, 2 vols., with Latin text and notes, subsequently reprinted), Cranstoun (Edinburgh and London, 1S72). An Essay tounrds a New Edition of the Elegies of Tibullus, with a Translation and Notes (London, 1792), merely con tains i. 1 and 7, 29-48. Sir C. A. Elton, Specimens of the Classic Poets (London, 1814, vol. xii. 141-171) contains i. 1; ii. 4; iii. 2-4; 6, 33 to end; iv. 2, 3. To these should probably be added Tibullus, with other Translations from Ovid, Horace, &.C., by Richard Whiffin, London, 1829. Cranstoun's is the only com plete version of merit; but it is far inferior to the translations by Elton, from whom Cranstoun seems sometimes to have borrowed. (J. P. P.)