blest with all the goods of the world, with the will and power to make the best of them (artem-fruendi). He lives in elegant style and his purse can stand the strain (mundus uictus non deficiente crumena). He has everything that heart can desire. He is handsome; he enjoys health, popularity, and reputation in abundance (cui...gratia fama ualetudo contingat abunde). Fama Tibullus certainly had; forma he may have had. But what of the rest of the description? Have we here the Tibullus of straitened means, of rustic tastes, of retiring disposition, of feeble health? If Albius was Tibullus, Horace soon had leisure to muse on the infelicity of his description; for within a twelvemonth his friend had dropped into an early grave. Explanations (I do not mean evasions) of these difficulties may still be found; but up till now they have not. I will content myself here with putting the first puzzle of all. How has it come about that while Tibullus says of himself 'diuitias alius fuluo sibi congerat auro e.q.s.: me mea paupertas uita traducit inerti,' dwells on his 'felicis quondam nunc pauperis agri' in which nunc agna exigui est hostia parua soli,' Horace should have seriously addressed to him this flat contradiction 'di tibi diuitias dederunt'?

The literary indications of identity are not more convincing than the personal. Beyond the fact that both men wrote elegi there is nothing to show that they are the same.

When Horace tells Albius not to be for ever descanting in pitiful elegy or asks him if he is writing something to surpass the minor compositions of Cassius of Parma, he is using a language and tone in perfect keeping if addressed to some rich literary amateur but a little surprising if employed

1 This line is sometimes misunderstood through inattention to the meaning of mundus. The sense of mundus fluctuates of course with the context; but it is nearer to the English 'smart' than to the English'neat.' And when Milton translated 'simplex munditiis' 'plain in thy neatness' (Hor. Od. 1. 5. 5) he was thinking rather of some dangerous Puritan beauty in snowy collar and cuffs than of the Pyrrha of Horace. Pyrrha was 'plain in her finery: but this same finery must have cost some one or other a pretty penny. Pliny explaining why the universe is called mundus Nat. Hist. 2 § 8 says 'quem kóσμоv Graeci nomine ornamenti appellauere eum et nos a perfecta absolutaque elegantia mundum.' What it costs to attain 'perfecta absolutaque elegantia' in any department every connoisseur knows and will easily understand why Horace adds that Albius' stylish living did not exhaust his resources. He was in happier case than the epicure of Juvenal 11. 38 'quis enim te deficiente crumina et crescente gula manet exitus aere paterno | ac rebus mersis in uentrem.' There, as here, deficio has its proper meaning of 'running out.'

towards the acknowledged master of elegiac poetry at Rome. Cassius Parmensis is best known as an assassin of Julius Caesar. He was killed at Athens after the battle of Actium as we are told by 'Acro' a scholiast on Horace l.c. According to the same authority he was an Epicurean and a voluminous writer of tragedies; he wrote satires and dabbled in literature generally (aliquot generibus stilum exercuit'). Amongst these works his elegies and epigrams are well spoken of (laudantur'). Would the author of the first book of the Epistles have publicly asked the poet of Delia and Nemesis if he was engaged upon something that would surpass the minor productions of this Cassius Parmensis? If so, he would have told the late poet laureate at the end of his life that he might write something to excel the minor productions of Mr. Andrew Lang.

The elegi of Albius bewailed the cruelty of a Glycera, who had jilted him for a younger rival. Critics now generally recognize that this Glycera can be neither Delia nor Nemesis.1 It is the rivalry of wealthier, not of younger suitors, of which Tibullus complains. Delia and Nemesis were the names which he himself had chosen, and for others to change them would have been an absurdity or an impertinence. So a third mistress and a third series of love elegies have to be invented and fitted in where best they can and ill enough at that. The miserabiles elegi are of course

irrecoverable.

The slender grounds for the identification have now been exposed. But why was it ever made? It is not difficult to see. To identify the characters in Horace appears to have been a favourite literary pastime. His commentator Porphyrio refers at Sat. 1. 3. 21 and 91 to scholars qui de personis Horatianis scripserunt. Now. Albius is the only one among his contemporaries whom he speaks of as a writer of elegies, and it was tempting to guess that he was the chief. The inference was, it is true, unwarrantable. Elegy was then a fashionable form of literature; many published, more produced it, and of all the elegists what have we remaining? Names and fragments or not even this. And why not so with Albius? Why again should Horace have alluded to

1 The late Prof. Sellar, Horace and the Elegiac Poets, p. 226, thought that Horace chose the name immitis Glycerae 'the ungentle sweet one' because of his partiality for the figure oxymoron.' This is a good reason for employing the epithet immitis, but a poor one for altering the proper name.

Tibullus' poetry at all? Virgil was his dear friend and benefactor and is frequently mentioned by name in his works. But if we knew only what Horace tells us, we should imagine that it was Varius, not Virgil, who was the great epic writer of Rome.

APPENDIX B

THE SIBYLLINE BOOKS AND RESPONSES

There is nothing in the meaning or history of the name Sibyl, Greek Zißuλλa, to limit its employment

several?

to a single person. Accordingly Greek writers One Sibyl or sometimes use it in the plural, and we find Tacitus, Annals 6. 12, and St. Augustine raising the question whether there was one Sibyl or several. The great Roman antiquary Varro, whom Lactantius, in citing his opinion, calls the most learned of all the Greek, to say nothing of the Roman writers, enumerated as many as ten: 1 the Persian, 2 the Libyan, 3 the Delphian, 4 the Cimmerian, 5 the Erythraean, 6 the Samian, 7 the Cumaean, 8 the Hellespontine, 9 the Phrygian, 10 the Tiburtine, adding a reference to the author who mentioned each.2

1 The following account is designed to help the student of Tibullus. It does not of course pretend to be complete.

2 See Lactantius I. ch. 6, from whose account the following extracts are taken (on the Cumacan Sibyl) 'septimam Cumanam nomine Amaltheam quae ab aliis Herophile uel Demophile nominatur camque nouem libros attulisse ad regem Tarquinium Priscum.-(On the second collection of Sibylline books) quorum postea numerus sit auctus Capitolio refecto quod ex omnibus ciuitatibus et Italicis et Graecis et praecipue Erythracis coacti adlatique sunt Romam cuiuscumque Sibyllae nomine fuerunt.- (The Tiburtine Sibyl) decimam Tiburtem nomine Albuneam quae Tiburi colatur ut dea iuxta ripas amnis Anienis, cuius in gurgite simulacrum cius inuentum esse dicitur tenens in manu librum [cuius sortes senatus in Capitolium transtulerit].

harum omnium Sibyllarum carmina et feruntur et habentur praeterquam Cumacae cuius libri a Romanis occultantur nec cos ab ullo nisi a XV uiris inspici fas habent. et sunt singularum singuli libri qui quia Sibyllac nomine inscribuntur unius esse creduntur suntque confusi, nec discerni ac suum cuique adsignari potest nisi Erythraeae quae et nomen suum uerum carmine indicat et Erythraeam se nominatuiri (i.e. nominatum iri) praelocuta est cum esset orta Babylone.-

omnes igitur hae Sibyllae unum deum praedicant. (The Erythraean Sibyl and the second collection) maxime uero Erythraea quae celebrior

The

Libri Sibyllini. and the later original collection.

At Rome the history of the Sibylline books itself brought this doubt into prominence. As is well known, the original three books which, according to the legend, were bought by King Tarquin, and, according to Varro (l.c.), contained the prophecies of the Sibyl of Cumae were destroyed when the temple of Iuppiter Capitolinus, beneath which they were kept, was burnt down in the year 83 B.C.

When Sulla had established himself at Rome he set to work to replace the loss and, as we know from Tacitus l.c. and other writers, commissioners were sent to a number of places in Greece, Asia Minor (Samos, Ilium, and Erythrae are specially mentioned), Sicily, and elsewhere to gather oracles to form a new collection. These Sibylline oracles were deposited in the restored temple, and the same authority and veneration claimed for them as for the old. What the Romans conceived to be the precise connexion of the local Sibyls with the original Tarquinian' Sibyl, we do not know. One and the same Sibyl might be supposed to have wandered through the world uttering oracles in different places or they may have thought that her prophetic power was transmitted to others as Elijah's to Elisha. It was enough for them if the inspiration of the oracles, new and old, was the same.

The Sibylline books were removed to the temple of Apollo on the Palatine by Augustus; but it is not quite certain when. The words of Suetonius, Aug. 31,3 that he placed

inter ceteras ac nobilior habetur, siquidem Fenestella, diligentissimus scriptor, de XV uiris ait restituto Capitolio rettulisse ad senatum C. Curionem cos. ut legati Erythras mitterentur qui carmina Sibyllae conquisita Romam deportarent; itaque missos esse P. Gabinium, M. Otacilium, L. Valerium qui descriptos a priuatis uersus circa mille Romam deportarunt.'

1 The statement of Seruius, the commentator on Virgil (Aen. vi. 36, also 72 and 321), that they were placed in the temple of Apollo on the Capitol appears to be due to some confusion. Dionysius of Halicarnassus says in the most precise way that they were kept under the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in a stone box below the ground.

2Quod à maioribus decretum erat post exustum Sociali bello Capitolium quacsitis Samo, Ilio, Erythris, per Africam etiam ac Siciliam et Italicas colonias carminibus Sibullae, una seu plures fuere, datoque sacerdotibus negotio, quantum humana ope potuissent, uera discernere' (the whole chapter should be read). See also Varro ap. Lact. already quoted.

3quicquid fatidicorum librorum Graeci Latinique generis nullis uel parum idoneis auctoribus uulgo ferebantur supra duo milia contracta undique, ac solos retinuit Sibyllinos, hos quoque delectu habito condiditque duobus forulis auratis sub Apollinis Palatini basi.'