PREFACE As the publication of a complete English edition of Tibullus appears to be unlikely for at least some time to come, an effort has been made in the preparation of these selections to meet the wants of two different classes of readers. The simplicity of the thought and diction of Tibullus adapts itself to the needs of those whose knowledge of Latin is comparatively in an early stage; while on the other hand when we go below the surface there are enough literary and critical difficulties connected with his poems and those attributed to him to engage the attention and tax the resources of maturer scholarship. It has accordingly been my aim in the explanatory notes to give as far as possible brief and simple comments upon the text that I have adopted, reserving the points that required longer or more advanced discussions to be dealt with in appendices. Translation into English I have avoided as much as possible as undesirable for the one class of readers and un necessary for the other. The illustrations have been added for the benefit of younger readers in accordance with a view of classical education now happily becoming more common; but they may prove to be of use to others at a time when our leading tragedian in the classic style confuses a shuttle and a spindle. In their selection I have been most liberally helped by Prof. A. B. Cook. In the unsettled passages of the text I have generally preferred an uncertain conjecture to a certain corruption, because there is no mischief so easy to effect or so difficult to repair as to vitiate the feeling for language and sense in the young. The reading of the manuscripts in such cases is always faithfully recorded. As in the Select Elegies of Propertius (in this series), I have employed u, not v, in Latin words, after first ascertaining from experienced teachers that the correct spelling would be no hindrance to students. My book of course owes much to the work of previous scholars upon Tibullus: for illustrative matter most to Dissen, Heyne, and their predecessors. In the textual and literary portions chief use has been made of the editions of Mueller, Baehrens, and Hiller, supplemented by the dissertations and discussions, mainly by German scholars, which have appeared in the last quarter of a century, amongst which may be mentioned the papers or pamphlets by H. Belling, F. Leonhard, H. Magnus, R. Ullrich, J. Vahlen, and F. Wilhelm. I have had before me also G. G. Ramsay's and F. Jacoby's selections. J. B. Carter's Roman Elegiac Poets and K. P. Schulze's Römische Elegie 1902, which contains a very useful bibliography, did not come into my hands till the bulk of my commentary was written. My best thanks are due to E. P. for much help in the toil of preparation. I cannot hope to have removed all the oversights and inequalities which scanty leisure and frequent interruptions must have left in this book, and I should be very grateful to any reader or critic who brings them under my notice. September 16, 1903. J. P. P. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS SACRIFICIAL PROCESSION (Suouetaurilia).} Frontispiece To illustrate II. i. 15 sq. CERES THRONED AND WEARING THE spicea corona. Į To illustrate I. i. 19 sq. and II. i. 4. ISIS CARRYING A sistrum. To illustrate I. iii. 23 sq. J THE UNDERWORLD (from a Tarentine Vase Painting),` showing Tisiphone, Cerberus, and Infernal To illustrate I. iii. 57 sqq. PAGE 10 WOMAN SPINNING, showing colus and fusus.) 12 To illustrate I. iii. 86, vi. 78. THE BULL APIS, WITH THE MOON-DISK BETWEEN HIS HORNS. 18 To illustrate I. vii. 28. POMPEIAN FAMILY SHRINE (aedicula), showing paint-` ings of Genius, with toga drawn over the To illustrate I. x. 15, II. ii. 5. THE LOOM OF PENELOPE, showing loom weights (lateres). To illustrate II. i. 66. THE Apollo Citharoedus OF THE VATICAN. To illustrate II. v. 1-8. INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I TIBULLUS Of all the forms of literature which Rome imported from Greece, the Elegy had next to the Roman Elegy. Ode the shortest life. A bare half century covers the activity of the four elegiac writers who are mentioned by Quintilian. Ovid, the last of the four, had long been dead when this critic wrote, and after him we know of none. By the time of Quintilian the elegiac couplet developing, as would appear, the character which the witty and heartless Ovid had impressed upon it, had broken with sentiment and become the proper vehicle of the epigram. And hence we need feel no surprise that when Quintilian's contemporary Statius had occasion to write an elegy, whether on a person or a parrot, it was not the elegiac but the hexameter metre that he selected for his task.1 Quintilian thus sums up in judgment on the merits of the four Roman Elegists :— In elegy also we contest the supremacy of Greece. Its most finished and tasteful writer seems to me Tibullus, though 1 Compare Statius Siluae V. i with Ovid Amores III. ix, and Siluae II. iv with Amores II. vi, |