who was so indifferent to wealth and ambition, who loved the country and lived simply, as one who understood the secret of a philosophic life; and as his object in the Epistles was to uphold this philosophic ideal, he draws attention to it, in connexion with Tibullus, in that work; as in the Odes, which reproduce the emotional side of life, he writes of him as a lover and poet. We need not suppose that we find the whole nature of Tibullus expressed in his Elegies. In them he dwells on the two aspects of his life that gave it an ideal charm for himself, his love for Delia and Nemesis, and the deep enjoyment which he derived from his home in the country. To Horace, who does not appear to be especially intimate with him, he would naturally be best known as a refined and cultivated gentleman, living on his hereditary estate. Though Tibullus says that he no longer enjoys the large estates of his ancestors, and complains that he is supplanted by a richer rival, yet he adds that he has enough for his wants

ego composito securus acervo, Despiciam dites despiciamque famem

and that he has learned or is rapidly learning 'contentus vivere parvo.' He speaks of receiving Messalla as an honoured guest, and of producing old Falernian and Chian wine on festive occasions. The whole tone of the first elegy of Book ii, and especially the lines

Turbaque vernarum, saturi bona signa coloni,

Ludet et ex virgis exstruet ante casas,

is that of a fairly prosperous man, living on the proceeds of his estate, and with many people dependent upon him. This statement of his position exactly corresponds with the

mundus victus, non deficiente crumena

ascribed to him; and it is a doctrine of Horace, inculcated in Odes, Satires, and Epistles, almost to satiety, that the truly rich man is he whose wants are moderate and who has enough to satisfy them. It is true that the cloud of impending death seems to cast a shadow over his happiness, though not the

His

deep gloom which it casts over that of Propertius. reference to his 'slight limbs' and 'tender hands' (ii. 3. 9) may be suggestive rather of the beauty attributed to him than of robust health; and his serious illness at Corcyra and his premature death may confirm what we should infer from the gentle strain of his verse, that he was not endowed with that vigorous vitality which beats in every line of Ovid. Yet we must remember that it is part of the delicate art of Horace, in the Epistles, to play the part of a physician and to hint to each person what is the matter with him; and as we saw how he did this to those whom he deemed too easily satisfied with themselves, so he would address words of cheering to such as may have seemed to him too prone to despondency. The words 'silvas inter reptare salubres' and the concluding advice as to the secret of true enjoyment,

Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremam :

Grata superveniet quae non sperabitur hora,

may have been intended as hints to one who appeared to him, as he himself may have appeared to others, over-regardful of his health and over-apprehensive of death1. His intimacy with Maecenas made Horace too familiar with such a state of mind. Other expressions in the Epistles correspond with the impression which we derive of Tibullus from his poems. The 'regio Pedana,' a district in Latium, between Praeneste and Tibur, where the Campagna rises up towards the Sabine and Equian hills, suits exactly the notion we form of the estate of Tibullus, as one adapted for flocks and herds, as well as corn-crops and vineyards and the ceremony of purifying the fields, described in the first elegy of Book ii, is an old rite of the Latin husbandmen. In the line

An tacitum silvas inter reptare salubres,

the word 'reptare' is suggestive of the gentle nature of the man, in contrast to the excitability of Propertius and the pleasure

1 This remark and one or two others in this examination of the Epistle were suggested by Kiessling's notes on the passage: aber Tibull ist Hypochonder und quält sich mit Todesgedanken.'

loving vivacity of Ovid. We may compare the epithet 'tacitum,' and the reference to his 'facundia,' his 'gift of expression,' in the words 'fari quae sentiat,' to the words in which Martial (viii. 70) characterises Nerva, whom he calls the Tibullus of his time

Quanta quies placidi, tanta est facundia Nervae.

The 'gratia' attributed to him applies well to the favoured friend of Messalla.

Even the slight allusion to his literary work is appropriate to the writer of elegies or epigrams. Horace could not have applied the term 'opuscula' to the tragedies of Cassius, but his use of the word indicates the same feeling which suggests the epithet 'exiguos' applied to the elegies in the 'Ars Poetica.' This Epistle may have been written before the first book of Elegies was published, and Horace may have known by report only of Tibullus as a writer of elegies. He addresses him as the 'candid critic of his Satires.' Had the Odes been given to the world when the Epistle was written, he would certainly have valued his favourable opinion of them more than of his 'sermones.' It was natural that Horace, writing perhaps about the year 25 or 26 B. C., should avoid the name of Gallus, who had so recently fallen into disgrace. It is somewhat remarkable that among the names of those who are mentioned by him in the tenth Satire of Book i. as the critics for whose favour he wrote, almost every name eminent in the literature of the age is mentioned, except that of Gallus. After his career in Egypt, Gallus must have been an especial object of suspicion to Maecenas, whose position required him to observe and watch all who might be dangerous to the Empire. Dion (liii. 24) records as a signal proof of the disgrace of Gallus, the disgust which Proculeius, so intimately connected with Maecenas, and mentioned by Horace as a type of all that was most respectable in that age, shewed when he met him. Cassius of Parma had been a leading man in the army of Brutus and Cassius, and may thus have been known to Horace personally. If it is

necessary to account for the omission of the name of Gallus and the presence of that of Cassius of Parma, explanations may be given quite consistent with the identity of Albius with the author of the Elegies.

There seems therefore no reason to doubt that Albius, the friend of Horace, is Albius Tibullus the poet. The gentleness and loyalty of the cultivated friend of Messalla would naturally attract Horace, as the vanity and self-assertion of the unwelcome intruder into the circle of Maecenas repelled him. The pictures of the two contemporary elegiac poets, Tibullus and Propertius, as they are painted in the first and second books of the Epistles, bear the test of a close comparison with the impression of themselves unconsciously left by those authors on their works, and confirm the opinion that in his Epistles Horace is a true and subtle, if not always indulgent discerner of character. The picture of Tibullus not only confirms but completes our knowledge of the man, and makes us better understand how worthy he was to be the comrade and friend of Messalla, the lover of philosophy no less than of literature.

But for all the details of the circumstances, tastes, interests of the poet, we must trust to the small volume which has reached us under his name. Of the three or, according to a division adopted in modern times, four books, contained in the volume, the first two only, those of which the prominent motive is the love of Delia and of Nemesis, can with certainty be ascribed to him. It is most likely that the first book only, consisting of ten elegies, was given to the world by the author, probably about 25 or 26 B.C., and that the second, consisting of six elegies, one of which is only twenty-two lines in length, was left incomplete, not finally revised by the author, and published soon after his death by some of the members of the circle of Messalla.

The first six elegies of the third book are the work of Lygdamus, a younger poet, and an evident imitator not only of Tibullus but of Ovid and Propertius1. The hexameter

1 As Lygdamus is not mentioned by Ovid or any of the ancients among the poets of the Augustan age, it is supposed by Birt ('Das antike Buch

poem, a panegyric on Messalla written in the year of his Consulship, 31 B.C., which intervenes between the elegies of Lygdamus and the concluding elegies of the book, is the composition of some member of the same literary circle. Most of the remaining elegies are devoted to the love-story of Sulpicia and an otherwise unknown Cerinthus. The last six of these are the composition of Sulpicia herself. The earlier elegies, introducing these, are not unworthy of Tibullus, and may have been written by him in sympathy with a daughter of the house, who from her intellectual gifts no less than her personal charms (iii. 8) may well have excited a warm and kindly interest in all the members of the circle, from her guardian Messalla to the poets and other friends who frequented his house.

The main story of the life of Tibullus, and the record of his feelings which is the most interesting part of it, are to be gathered from a rapid survey of the elegies composing the first two books. He was born about the year 54 B.C. (more probably after than before that date) and died still a young man in the year 18 B. C. He was of equestrian rank, and belonged to an old Latin family, settled in the neighbourhood of the towns of Pedum and Gabii. His estate had been handed down to him through a long line of ancestors (ii. 1. 2), but had since their time been much diminished (i. 1. 19–22). It is generally supposed that, as in the case of Virgil, Horace, and Propertius, his losses were due to the confiscations that followed the battle of Philippi. But Tibullus does not, as he might naturally have done, assign this as the cause of his losses; and landed property is diminished by other causes besides confiscation, acting through several generations. No town in Latium is mentioned by Appian among those whose lands were assigned for that purpose. Tibullus was born into the position, the most fortunate in that age for a man of culture, of the inheritor of a country

wesen') that his elegies were at an early period comprised in one volume with the short second book of Tibullus, and that thus they came to be cited in the middle ages as from the second book of Tibullus. No third or fourth book is referred to in the anthologies which existed in the middle ages.