ibullus is not an easy poet. Much of his difficulty lies in the fact that his difficulties tend to lie hidden. Yet, for all the ceramically smooth “simplicity” of its surface, the “terse and elegant” diction of Tibullan elegy does have intelligent, richly complex poetic pleasure to offer. 1 What the poetry demands of a reader in return, at the level of diction, is a patient and passionate interest in the linguistic stuff poems are made of. Knowledgeable ancient readers could presumably meet that demand, or approach it, by reading slowly enough, carefully enough, and imaginatively enough. For us, in a world where no one has a native speaker’s access to Tibullus’ language(s), the “art of reading slowly,” even when sustained by constant resort to lexical aids, has often left readers with the impression of a poetic production better described as disappointingly thin than elegantly slender. 2 Readerly hunger, like other kinds, has a way of eroding hope, and Tibullan criticism is no stranger to the desperate measure or the counsel of despair. The critical approach of reading for difficulty is beset by two separate problems in Tibullus’ case. 3 There is first of all the problem of finding the difficulties instead of reading right past them. And when once a turn of language has been identified as difficult, the second problem arises at the point where we begin to suspect we may have exhausted the ordinary avenues for its interpretation: we have tended to stop too soon. The twentieth-century reception of Tibullus made it all too easy for critics to be satisfied with explaining away whatever looks disjunctive, discontinuous, or illogical in these poems as mere effects of a poet’s free-flowing, oscillating, “hypersubjunctive” dreaminess. 4

What Poets Do: Tibullus on “Easy” Hands

The Tibullus of twentieth-century criticism is the shy, retiring type. Somewhere between a linguistic somnambulist and a rustic philosopher, he is dreamy, sensitive, melancholy, thoughtful, and, above all, non-threatening. Compared to the work of “exuberant” Propertius or “subversive” Ovid (or even the shade of “rough and ready” Gallus), the elegies of cosy old Tibullus present a gently rolling landscape. Perhaps there is the odd dark cloud, but it

Poet/Reader, Authority Deferred: Re-Reading Tibullan Elegy

In Amores 3.9, Ovid frequently alludes to Tibullus 1.3, meticulously correcting Tibullus's fear of death in an unknown land. In Tristia 3.3, Ovid revisits Tibullus 1.3, ostensibly finding comfort in sharing similar circumstances with Tibullus. Since many of the allusions in Tristia 3.3 and Amores 3.9 point to the same passages in Tibullus's poem, Tibullus 1.3 becomes a linchpin, joining two divergent interpretations of the same poem. In each instance, a look back at Amores 3.9 reveals the comparison between Ovid and Tibullus in Tristia 3.3 to be specious, suggesting that Ovid deserves special sympathy for suffering what Tibullus only feared.

In Memory of Tibullus: Ovid's Remembrance of Tibullus 1.3 in Amores 3.9 and Tristia 3.3

We might expect an apostrophe, or at least a reference, to patron or beloved, such as we encounter, for instance, in the initial line of Propertius 1.1. 2 These addresses do come, but only after the poem has run more than half its course. What we find, instead of an appeal for, or acknowledgement of, support or inspiration, is a brisk request for differentiation between the speaker and someone else ( alius ), a differentiation centered on the amassing of riches ( divitias ), the poem’s striking first word. The full bravura of this initial act of distinction will only become apparent as the poem progresses. Reiteration of divitias at line 41 asks us to attend to the first figure from whom the speaker prominently dissociates himself, namely a wealthy ancestor (41–42):

Virgil and Tibullus 1.1

From the modern perspective the divide between Latin and the Romance Languages is so well established that one is tempted to regard such a development as inevitable. The terms “Vulgar Latin” and “Classical Latin” are so familiar that it is easy to imagine that the former changed over time into the Romance Languages while the latter remained the same. This scenario, however, does not take into account the ability of languages to be sufficiently elastic that the written form can retain archaic grammar and vocabulary while the spoken form advances. The preponderance of surviving evidence supports the view that Latin and forms of Romance were not consciously distinguished from one another until the Carolingian Renaissance c. AD 800. This eventual dichotomy seems to have been prompted, not by natural development, but rather by a reform in the pronunciation of Latin that was promoted at this time by the monk Alcuin. The new pronunciation eventually occasioned written forms of the Romance Languages.

Robert J. Ball

Papers

Tibullus the elegist: A critical survey

"Albi", "Ne Doleas": Horace and Tibullus

Teaching Classical Languages: A Reasonable Approach

The Classical Papers of Gilbert Highet

Reading Classical Latin: A Reasonable Approach