Tibullus book 2 is a collection of six Latin poems written in elegiac couplets by the poet Albius Tibullus. They are thought to have been written in the years shortly before Tibullus's death in c. 19 BC.
The six poems have various themes: Tibullus's ideal depiction of life in the countryside; a birthday poem in honour of a young friend; and his inability to shake off his love for an expensive courtesan called Nemesis. The longest poem (2.5) is a celebration of the appointment of Messalinus, son of Tibullus's patron Messalla, to an important religious post. It contains a prophecy of the future greatness of Rome, with many echoes of Virgil's Aeneid .
Although the shortness of the book compared with Tibullus book 1 has led some scholars to suppose that it was left unfinished on Tibullus's death, yet the careful arrangement and length of the poems appear to indicate that it is complete in its present form.
All the poems of the book are built according to a chiastic pattern (also known as ring composition), as Murgatroyd demonstrates in his commentary. Some of the poems also have smaller inner rings contained within the overall pattern. [1]
The book has a symmetrical or chiastic structure, as follows:
The poems are of differing lengths: 90, 22, 84, 60, 122, and 54 lines respectively. (Some lines are missing from poem 3; 80 lines of it survive.) If the length of each poem is added to its opposite, the following pattern emerges:
For this reason, although some scholars [2] have conjectured that the book was left unfinished, or that part of poem 6 was lost, it is argued by Helena Dettmer that the book is complete as it is. [3] [lower-alpha 1]
By the time Tibullus wrote these poems, Delia (Tibullus's girlfriend in book 1) had disappeared, and another woman called Nemesis had taken her place. Tibullus says he has been in love with her for a year (2.5.119). She is named after Nemesis, the goddess of divine retribution.
Like Delia, Nemesis appears to have been a high-class courtesan. Before she will sleep with anyone, she requires gifts (2.4.33). These include, for example, clothes made of Coan silk interwoven with gold threads; a retinue of black slaves; fabrics dyed with north African and Tyrian purple (2.3.50–78). Green emeralds and pearls are also welcome (2.4.27–30). Nemesis has a lena (a procuress) called Phryne who arranges encounters with other wealthier lovers and keeps Tibullus waiting outside (2.6.43–54). So rapacious is Nemesis that at one point Tibullus even contemplates selling his ancestral estate to pay for her (2.4.53). (According to Horace (Satires 1.2.55–56) a person called Marsaeus was notorious for doing exactly this.)
Nemesis had a sister, of whom Tibullus had been very fond, but it seems that the sister had died after falling out of a high window (2.6.39).
Poems 2 and 3 are both addressed to a certain Cornutus, who in poem 2 is celebrating his birthday and not yet married. The identity of Cornutus is not certain, but may well be the M. Caecilius Cornutus who, according to an inscription of 21 BC (CIL VI 32338), was a member with Messalla of the Arval college, or possibly his son, mentioned in another inscription (CIL VI 2023a) as an Arval in AD 14. [4] [5]
Several scholars have suggested that he is the same as the person mentioned under the pseudonym "Cerinthus" in the poems of Sulpicia and in the Garland of Sulpicia preserved in book 3 of the Tibullan collection: the phonetic similarity of the names, the false etymology linking "Cerinthus" to Greek κέρας (keras) 'horn', the equivalent of Latin cornu, as well as the similarity of the situation described in 3.11 and 3.12, in which it appears that "Cerinthus" is about to marry Sulpicia, make this plausible but not certain.
A complication is the similarity of his situation to that of "Cerinthus" addressed in Horace's Satire 1.2.81 (dated about 35 BC), to whom Horace gives the advice that it is better to have sex with a freedwoman than a rich aristocratic woman. It is not known if this is the same person. [6] For Maltby, however, who argues that the Sulpicia poems and the Garland were not written in the time of Tibullus but much later, the persona of "Cerinthus" is a literary construct invented on the basis of Tibullus 2.2 and Horace. [4]
Poem 6 begins by mentioning a certain Macer who is going 'to the camp'. It is generally thought that probably this is the same Macer that Ovid writes to in Amores 2.18, who is a poet engaged in writing an epic about the Trojan war, and who is mentioned again in Ovid's Ex Ponto 2.10.13 as writing a poem in Homeric style. [7] However, the Macer mentioned here is not thought to be the same poet as Aemilius Macer of Verona (mentioned in Ovid's Tristia 4.10.43–44) or the same as Pompeius Macer, another poet who is said to have written tragedies and epigrams in Greek. [8]
According to a suggestion made by Leah Kronenberg, Macer ('the thin one') might be a pen-name for the poet Valgius Rufus, a friend of Messalla and a member of his circle. In the Panegyricus Messallae 180, it is said that 'no one is nearer to Homer than Valgius' in language similar to that used by Ovid of Macer. [8] Whether the phrase castra sequitur 'he is following the camp' means that Macer was really departing on a military campaign or whether it refers metaphorically to a change to writing epic poetry is unknown.
The poet sings a hymn celebrating a rural festival, probably the lustratio agri ("blessing of the farm"), taking on the role of a priest or vates ("seer"). [9] The festival is sometimes said to be the Ambarvalia. However, there appears to be insufficient evidence to link Tibullus's description to any particular festival. [10]
The Messalla mentioned in this poem is Tibullus's patron Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, who at this period was the "most important literary patron after Maecenas". [11] Among other people in his circle were the young Ovid. Messalla himself wrote memoires, philosophical and grammatical works, and, it seems, bucolic poetry in Greek. [11]
Spyridon Tzounakas (2013) argues that this poem is more than a simple description of country life but sets forth Tibullus's poetic ideals as well. There are multiple allusions to Hellenistic epigram, Vergil's Eclogues, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura and Vergil's Georgics and even reference to stock themes of comedy in lines 2.1.73-74, as if Tibullus is seeking to place his poetry in the poetic tradition. There are also references to Horace's Satires; for example, in Satires 1.10.23–24, Horace compares the earlier satirist Lucilius's habit of using Greek words to mixing Falernian and Chian wine (one being Italian, the other Greek); in this poem Tibullus calls for both Falernian and Chian wine (2.1.27–28), as if to say that his poetry will take inspiration from both Latin and Greek sources. [9] In lines 2.1.67–71, Tibullus defends his preference to make the countryside a major part of his book of love-poetry by arguing that Cupid first began his activities in a rural setting.
In terms of subject matter and verbal echoes, this poem also has a lot in common with the first poem of book 1, which is also about a rural festival. Helena Dettmer writes: [3]
The poem as a whole is chiastically patterned, as Murgatroyd shows. For example, in the first section (lines 1–16) the words Bacche veni, procul, deo, post, nocte, Venus, turba and others are echoed by the same or similar words in the last section (lines 81–90), and there are similar verbal echoes linking lines 17–36 with lines 67–80. [12]
The song celebrating the countryside in lines 37–66 itself has a chiastic structure, in that the words cano, pellere, compositis, primum, rura, rure, verno, flores, agricola, primum, satiatus, cantavit in the first half are echoed by the same or similar words in reverse order in the second half, making a pleasing balance. [13]
The phrase certo ... pede 'with sure foot' (line 52) which ends the first half of the poem is echoed by incerto ... pede 'with unsure foot' (line 90) which ends the second half.
This poem is of the type called genethliakon [lower-alpha 2] or birthday poem. Other examples are Tibullus 1.7, poems 3.11 and 3.12 in the Garland of Sulpicia and 3.14 and 3.15 in Sulpicia's poems in book 3 of the Tibullan collection.
On the identity of Cornutus, see above.
The poem as a whole is a ring composition, beginning and ending with the birthday god Natalis and the words venit, veniat 'he comes, may it come'. The central section of the poem (lines 11–16) is Tibullus's prediction that Cornutus will pray for a faithful wife who is to be preferred to vast estates and rubies and pearls. [14]
Helena Dettmer argues that this poem has several points of contact with poem 5, despite being much shorter, and appears to be an example of parallel writing (see below for details). [3]
Julia Gaisser (1977) [15] points out that line 11:
is an imitation of the following line in Virgil's 10th eclogue (Ec. 10.18.):
In Eclogue 10 Virgil depicts the poet Gallus as grieving for his girlfriend Lycoris, who has gone off with a rich soldier. With this imitation Tibullus puts himself in the same situation as Gallus in that poem.
The fact that this poem is addressed to Cornutus perhaps indicates that Tibullus is warning his friend of the ruinous expense of keeping a courtesan, and reinforcing his advice in 2.2 to get married.
As with other poems in this book, the structure is chiastic: the first 32 lines and the last 20 (61–80) speak of the countryside, framing the central part (33–60), which speaks of non-rustic matters, namely a denunciation of the poet's wealthy rival and Tibullus's despair that Nemesis demands such expensive gifts. [16]
In both the first ten lines and the last four [17] Tibullus speaks of his willingness to work as a slave in the fields, provided that he can get a glimpse of Nemesis. The words meam, heu, agros, and dominam are common to both sections. [16]
In the second section Tibullus recounts Apollo's sufferings in the countryside, and addresses the god Phoebus Apollo; in the corresponding section in the second half of the poem Tibullus curses the countryside and addresses the god Bacchus. The words formosus (11, 65), valle (19, 72), and Amor, Veneri, aperte (28–29, 71–72) link these parts. [17]
There are two central sections, one dealing with the wealth desired by men (estates, palaces, fish farms) and the other with the wealth desired by women (Coan silk, black slaves, purple fabrics). Each of these sections has an anaphoric passage: praeda ... praeda ... praeda ... praedator in the first and illa ... illi ... illi in the second. Similar anaphoric patterns are also found in the central sections of other Tibullan elegies, such as the repeated spes ... spes ... spes ... spes of poem 2.6 or pax ... pax ... pax ... pace of poem 1.10. [17]
Within the overall chiastic structure, the Apollo section (11–32) is itself chiastic, with the words comae, curas, amor, deus occurring at beginning and end, the blushing sister (18) matching the grieving mother (23), the anaphora of o quotiens ... o quotiens (17, 19) matching that of saepe ... saepe (21, 23), and Apollo's learned songs (20) matching his oracles (21).
Helena Dettmer points out the parallel arrangement of words and ideas in this poem and poem 3. [3] For example, Tibullus is burnt by the sun in 3.9, but by Love in 4.5; the ineffectiveness of poetry and song in winning over one's lover occurs in 3.12 and 4.13; money is obtained by fighting wars in 3.36–46 or through murder and crime in 4.21–26; Coan silk and Tyrian purple are mentioned in 3.53–58 and in 4.27–30; both poems end with Tibullus agreeing to submit to whatever his mistress wishes. The name Nemesis itself is not mentioned until line 3.61 and line 4.59; but the name Amor is found at the end of line 4 of both poems.
Again the poem is chiastic. Murgatroyd proposes a simple ABCDC'B'A' structure, noting various verbal echoes tying the corresponding sections together: for example, in section A, in lines 1–5 the words video, illa, Amor, seu are reflected in lines 57–60 by amores, si, videat, illa; in section B, lines 15–20, the words ite, si, prodestis, colo are reflected in lines 51–54 by prosunt, colendus, si, ite; and in section C, lines 21–26, the words at, flebilis ante, dat are reflected in lines 45–50 by at, flebitur ante, dabit. [18]
The centre of the poem according to this scheme is lines 39–44, in which Tibullus warns Nemesis that she will be punished bitterly in future if she only gives love in return for presents.
Poem 2.5 honours Messalinus, eldest son of Tibullus's patron Messalla, on the occasion of his appointment to the Quindecimviri sacris faciundis , a college of priests whose main function was to guard the prophetic Sibylline books. [19] The year of this appointment is not known for certain but was argued by Syme to be 21 BC. [20] Messalinus is also addressed in a poem written by Ovid in exile after Messalla's death (Ex Ponto 1.7). Messalinus was eventually to receive triumphal honours, but not until AD 12, after his father's death. At the time this poem was written, he was only about 16 or 17.
In the poem there are many references to Virgil's Aeneid , especially in the sibyl's prophecy (2.5.39–64) but also elsewhere in the poem. (A full list of these is given in Ball.) [21] It would seem that, although the Aeneid was only officially published after Virgil's death in 19 BC (which was also the year of Tibullus's death), yet Tibullus must have got knowledge of its contents earlier, possibly from Virgil's own recitations, which Aelius Donatus informs us he often gave. [22] Unlike Virgil, Horace, Propertius, and Ovid, Tibullus nowhere mentions or praises Augustus either in this poem or elsewhere, which has been taken by some as indicating that he was not a supporter of Augustus. [21]
The beginning of poem 5 has much in common with poem 2 and is another example of Tibullus's practice of parallel composition. Both poems in the first couplet have the word fave 'be gracious'. In 2.2 the birthday spirit (Natalis) comes to the altar, while in 2.5 Apollo is invited to come. Both Cornutus's Genius and Apollo are to wear garlands (2.2.5–6, 2.7.5–6). In 2.2.11 Tibullus acts as augur 'diviner'; in 2.5.11 this role is taken by Apollo. The prayer for children in 2.2.22 is matched by the prediction of children in 2.5.91–92. [3]
Also typically Tibullan are the smooth transitions between one topic to another. Erika Damer (2014) writes of Tibullus's style of composition: "Although the syntax and word order are straightforward, the dreamy quality of the transitions between Tibullus' verses obscures the movement from one scene to the next and from one theme to another." [23]
As Leah Kronenberg (2018) points out, there are two acrostics hidden in the poem. The words AVDI ME 'hear me!' are picked out by the first letters of the pentameters from 2.5.16 to 2.5.26; and the word AMES 'may you love!' in the first letters of the last four pentameters of the poem (2.5.116–122). The first acrostic begins with the word abdita 'hidden things' just after the Sibyl has been described as prophesying; the second (which appears to be a message to Nemesis herself) begins just after Tibullus has referred to himself as vates 'seer' in line 2.5.114. [24] As Cicero points out in his book de Divinatione (2.111–112), acrostics were a regular feature of Sibylline oracles. [25]
In Murgatroyd's (1994) analysis the poem, like others in this book, has a chiastic ring structure, as follows: [26]
His scheme thus differs from that of Ball (1975), who also considers the poem to be chiastic, but puts the Sibyl's prophecy at the centre. [21] Murgatroyd's solution is based on the numerous verbal links which connect the corresponding sections before and after the centre.
For example, in Murgatroyd's section A (lines 1–18) the words Phoebe (2x), fave, vocales, meas, triumphali, devinctus ... lauro, sacra/sacras, victori, canit/canat, Messalinum are all matched by the same or similar words in the last 18 lines (105–122); Apollo's long hair (longas ...comas) in line 8 is matched by the phrase intonsi ... capilli 'unshorn locks' in line 121; the vocative Phoebe 'Phoebus (Apollo)' is repeated at the beginning and end of each of sections A and A'.
Further verbal echoes are found linking sections B and B', for example iuvenem ... puella in line 36 matches iuvenis ... puellae in line 101, and dedit ... parentem ... raptos in 19–20 matches dabit ... parenti ... eripiet in 92–3. There are also verbal links on either side of the central section which frame it, for example (herbas, herba (55, 95), Ceres, Ceres (58, 84), sacras ... laurus, sacris ... laurea, sacer ... laurus (63, 81, 82–3), incendia, flammas (47, 90)). [27]
Ball points out that Tibullus 1.7, written in honour of Messalinus's father, has a similar ring structure (see Tibullus book 1). [28]
This poem belongs to the type known as a paraclausithyron (a complaint made by a lover outside a mistress's locked door), which was common in ancient love-poetry. [29] [30] [31] Another example in Tibullus is poem 1.2.
The opening words of the poem (castra Macer sequitur "Macer is following a camp") are taken by Murgatroyd literally: Macer, a friend of Tibullus, is about to depart to the army. [29] Most scholars, however, think that Tibullus is talking metaphorically, and saying that Macer has decided to abandon love-poetry for epic. [32]
Helena Dettmer points out a similarity between this poem and poem 2.4 in the descriptions of the mourning which is given to a "good, not greedy" girl in 2.4.45–50 and to Nemesis's sister in 2.6.29–34. There are also several thematic connections to poem 1.10, for example, the theme of military warfare contrasted with amatory warfare. [3]
As with all Tibullus's poems, the poem is chiastic. The central section of the poem in Murgatroyd's analysis is 19–28, a hymn to the goddess Hope, with an anaphora of the word Spes 'Hope', repeated five times. [33] As often, this central section contains general truths, while the passages on either side mention personal concerns, with an appeal to Love in section 2 balanced by an appeal to Nemesis in section 4. The first and last sections balance the actions of Macer against those of Phryne the lena ('procuress'), and describe Tibullus's reactions.
Overall the poem has fewer chiastic verbal echoes than poems 1 to 5, although there are some, for example portat (line 8) vs portans (46), loquor (11) vs loquaces (43). [33] Within the overall scheme there are other echoes making smaller rings: for example, castra at the beginning and end of section 1, loquor/loqui at the beginning and end of section 2, spes at the beginning and end of section 3, lacrimis near the beginning and end of section 4, and lena at the beginning and end of section 5. [33]
The elegiac couplet is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, adopted the same form in Latin many years later. As with the English heroic couplet, each pair of lines usually makes sense on its own, while forming part of a larger work.
Publius Ovidius Naso, known in English as Ovid, was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus exiled him to Tomis, the capital of the newly-organised province of Moesia, on the Black Sea, where he remained for the last nine or ten years of his life. Ovid himself attributed his banishment to a "poem and a mistake", but his reluctance to disclose specifics has resulted in much speculation among scholars.
Albius Tibullus was a Latin poet and writer of elegies. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to him are of questionable origins.
Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus was a Roman general, author, and patron of literature and art.
Sulpicia is believed to be the author, in the first century BCE, of six short poems written in Latin which were published as part of the corpus of Albius Tibullus's poetry. She is one of the few female poets of ancient Rome whose work survives.
Sextus Propertius was a Latin elegiac poet of the Augustan age. He was born around 50–45 BC in Assisium and died shortly after 15 BC.
Marcus Valerius Messalla Messallinus was a Roman senator who was elected consul for 3 BC.
Gaius Valgius Rufus was a Roman senator, and a contemporary of Horace and Maecenas. He succeeded Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus as suffect consul upon the latter's death in 12 BC. Rufus is best known as a writer of elegies and epigrams, and his contemporaries believed him capable of great things in epic writing. The author of the panegyric on Messalla Corvinus compared Rufus as the equal of Homer.
The Odes are a collection in four books of Latin lyric poems by Horace. The Horatian ode format and style has been emulated since by other poets. Books 1 to 3 were published in 23 BC. A fourth book, consisting of 15 poems, was published in 13 BC.
The Eclogues, also called the Bucolics, is the first of the three major works of the Latin poet Virgil.
The Appendix Vergiliana is a collection of Latin poems traditionally ascribed as being the juvenilia of Virgil.
Amores is Ovid's first completed book of poetry, written in elegiac couplets. It was first published in 16 BC in five books, but Ovid, by his own account, later edited it down into the three-book edition that survives today. The book follows the popular model of the erotic elegy, as made famous by figures such as Tibullus or Propertius, but is often subversive and humorous with these tropes, exaggerating common motifs and devices to the point of absurdity.
Epistulae ex Ponto is a work of Ovid, in four books. It is a collection of letters describing Ovid's exile in Tomis written in elegiac couplets and addressed to his wife and friends. The first three books were composed between 12–13 AD, according to the general academic consensus: "none of these elegies contains references to events falling outside that time span". The fourth book is believed to have been published posthumously.
The poetry of Gaius Valerius Catullus was written towards the end of the Roman Republic in the period between 62 and 54 BC.
The Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony near Naples, Italy. The word sibyl comes from the ancient Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess. There were many sibyls throughout the ancient world. Because of the importance of the Cumaean Sibyl in the legends of early Rome as codified in Virgil's Aeneid VI, and because of her proximity to Rome, the Cumaean Sibyl became the most famous among the Romans. The Erythraean Sibyl from modern-day Turkey was famed among Greeks, as was the oldest Hellenic oracle, the Sibyl of Dodona, dating to the second millennium BC according to Herodotus, favored in the east.
Eclogue4, also known as the FourthEclogue, is a Latin poem by the Roman poet Virgil. The poem is dated to 40 BC by its mention of the consulship of Virgil's patron Gaius Asinius Pollio.
Lygdamus was a Roman poet who wrote love poems in Classical Latin. Six of his elegies, addressed to a girl named Neaera, are preserved in the Appendix Tibulliana alongside the apocryphal works of Tibullus. In poem 5, line 6, he describes himself as young and in 5.18 gives his birth year as the year "when both consuls died by equal fate". This line, however, is identical to one in Ovid's Tristia from AD 11, and it has been much debated by scholars. One suggestion, supported by the numerous commonalities between Lygdamus and Ovid, is that "Lygdamus" is merely a pen name used by the young Ovid; other scholars have suggested that Lygdamus was a separate poet from Ovid and was imitated by him; they assume that the line quoted above is an interpolation. Some more recent scholars have argued that Lygdamus lived much later than Ovid and imitated his style. No other author mentions Lygdamus, making the mystery of his real identity all the more difficult.
The Garland of Sulpicia, also sometimes known as the Sulpicia cycle or the Sulpicia-Cerinthus cycle, is a group of five Latin love poems written in elegiac couplets and included in volume 3 of the collected works of Tibullus. The five poems concern a love affair between a girl Sulpicia and a young man Cerinthus. They are followed in the collection by a further group of six short elegies ostensibly written by Sulpicia herself describing the same affair.
The Panegyricus Messallae, also known as the Laudes Messallae, is a 212-line Latin poem in dactylic hexameters included in the 3rd book of the Roman poet Tibullus's collected works. It is a panegyric or praise-poem apparently written to celebrate the installation to the consulship of Tibullus's patron the Roman aristocrat Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus in 31 BC. The poem is numbered 3.7 in the Tibullus collection. It follows the six elegiac poems of "Lygdamus" and is followed by the five elegiac poems known as the Garland of Sulpicia.
Tibullus book 1 is the first of two books of poems by the Roman poet Tibullus. It contains ten poems written in Latin elegiac couplets, and is thought to have been published about 27 or 26 BC.