Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Elegies of Tibullus Being the Consolations of a Roman Lover Done in English Verse
    The Elegies of Tibullus Being the Consolations of a Roman Lover Done in English Verse
    The Elegies of Tibullus Being the Consolations of a Roman Lover Done in English Verse
    Ebook115 pages1 hour

    The Elegies of Tibullus Being the Consolations of a Roman Lover Done in English Verse

    By Theodore Chickering Williams and Tibullus

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    The Elegies of Tibullus Being the Consolations of a Roman Lover Done in English Verse

    Related to The Elegies of Tibullus Being the Consolations of a Roman Lover Done in English Verse

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Jan Morris

      Jun 15, 2018

      I have always rather envied the poet Ovid, who was banished from Rome by the emperor Augustus, you may remember, to a remote place called Tomis on the shores of the Black Sea. There he died, ten years later, and his exile has gone into legend and int

      17 min read

    • Article

      Cheeky Blinder

      May 27, 2021

      Cheeky Blinder
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Matt Seidel

      Dec 9, 2017

      I tend to buy used books in bunches, which means the haul from some expeditions stays buried for weeks, months, years even. For this entry, I highlight three finds that, breaking custom, I bought and read almost immediately this year: Hugo Charteris’

      6 min read

    • Article

      Cathedral Spotting At Its Best

      Nov 3, 2021

      IF Simon Jenkins were a building, what listing would he receive? Certainly Grade I, but I suspect a special super-plus category would be required. Many people would be content with a career as newspaper editor, columnist, National Trust chairman and

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Grand Tour

      Feb 29, 2024

      OPERA’S VALUE AS A GUIDE TO negotiating the old vale of tears continues to be hotly debated — well, here, anyway; to be fair, it’s got to be a better bet than mime. On the plus side, you can expect loads of hot sex and a richly varied emotional life.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Francis Spufford Vividly Recreates an 18th-Century New York in ‘Golden Hill’

      Jul 26, 2018

      Dear Reader, envision that Village which grew upon the southern strand of that isle of Manhattoes: a Lenape settlement purchased for 60 guilders and named for Amsterdam, later to be acquired by gunships of King James, and her wooden-legged governor r

      7 min read

    • Article

      Ovid’s Exilic Imagination

      May 25, 2022

      I suggest that Ovid was not simply exiled, but that he also exiled himself. The post Ovid’s Exilic Imagination appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      In The Middle Of Even This: Poetry

      Jan 1, 2020

      To be brought from the bright schoolyard into the house:to stand by her bed like an animal stunned in the pen:against the grid of the quilt, her hand seemsstitched to the cuff of its sleeve—although he wantsmost urgently the hand to stroke his head,a

      7 min read

    • Article

      My Golden Book Of Hours

      Jun 1, 2022

      My Golden Book Of Hours
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Special Relationship

      Mar 20, 2024

      A Special Relationship
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Best Books Of The Year

      Dec 13, 2023

      The Best Books Of The Year
      8 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Sep 4, 2018

      In London. England. Who knows why?Perhaps this rumpled guyFrom central casting or a page of Dickens.He’s taking ordinary usTo haunts of the illustrious,Where even dull pulse quickens. A red felt hat’s dark fingered brim,Food-spotted vest are—him.A mo

      4 min read

    • Article

      Poem Of The Week: Poetry For Supper By RS Thomas

      Oct 31, 2022

      ‘Listen, now, verse should be as naturalAs the small tuber that feeds on muck And grows slowly from obtuse soil To the white flower of immortal beauty.’ ‘Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer Said once about the long toil That goes like blood to the poe

      3 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      knew his seams both false & true, his garters, nifty eyelets. A gainful trade,stockings being what they were: always ruined or runneled: even Queen E’s silk fixed, darned at the tooes. He owned a brickworks, too. Wrote novels. Pamphlets. One about re

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Waste Land turns 100

      Oct 19, 2022

      The Waste Land turns 100
      5 min read

    • Article

      Stop Hating on Adjectives!

      Jun 12, 2019

      A common admonition in creative writing pedagogy is, “Cut as many adjectives as possible.” I propose that this rule springs from mere prejudice. The post Stop Hating on Adjectives! appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Landscape Was His Mistress

      Feb 9, 2022

      IN 1802, John Constable wrote seven observations and resolutions about art. In them, among other things, he pledged to follow Nature, to make ‘unaffected’ pictures, and to avoid ‘common place people’. He also declared that ‘there is no easy way of be

      5 min read

    • Article

      Apparition

      Mar 26, 2020

      Apparition
      8 min read

    • Article

      Going Dutch

      Dec 8, 2021

      THIS work covers a period neatly book-ended by two sea journeys: those of Matilda, William the Conqueror’s Flemish-speaking wife, and the Dutch William of Orange in 1688. Between the two dates, the fortunes of Anglo-Dutch literary relations, like tho

      5 min read

    • Article

      An Autumn Choice

      Sep 28, 2022

      An Autumn Choice
      5 min read

    Reviews for The Elegies of Tibullus Being the Consolations of a Roman Lover Done in English Verse

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Elegies of Tibullus Being the Consolations of a Roman Lover Done in English Verse - Theodore Chickering Williams

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Elegies of Tibullus, by Tibullus

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: The Elegies of Tibullus

      Author: Tibullus

      Posting Date: November 5, 2011 [EBook #9610]

      Release Date: January, 2006

      First Posted: October 9, 2003

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ELEGIES OF TIBULLUS ***

      Produced by Ted Garvin, David Garcia and the Online

      Distributed Proofreading Team.

      THE ELEGIES OF TIBULLUS

      BEING

      THE CONSOLATIONS OF A ROMAN LOVER

      DONE IN ENGLISH VERSE

      BY THEODORE C. WILLIAMS

      BOSTON AND NEW YORK

      HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

      (The Riverside Press Cambridge)

      1908

      TO WILLIAM COE COLLAR

      HEAD MASTER OF THE

      ROXBURY LATIN SCHOOL

      Our old master ever young to his old boys:

      Did Mentor with his mantle thee invest,

      Or Chiron lend thee his persuasive lyre,

      Or Socrates, of pedagogues the best,

      Teach thee the harp-strings of a youth's desire?

      PREFACE

      Albius Tibullus was a Roman gentleman, whose father fought on Pompey's side. The precise dates of his birth and death are in doubt, and what we know of his life is all in his own poems; except that Horace condoles with him about Glycera, and Apuleius says Delia's real name was Plautia.

      Horace paid him this immortal compliment: (Epist. 4 bk. I).

      "Albi nostrorum sermonum candide judex,

      Non tu corpus eras sine pectore; Di tibi formam,

      Di tibi divitias dederant, artemque fruendi."

      After his death, Ovid wrote him a fine elegy (p. 115); and Domitius Marsus a neat epigram. The former promised him an immortality equal to Homer's; the latter sent him to Elysium at Virgil's side. These excessive eulogies are the more remarkable in that Tibullus stood, proudly or indolently, aloof from the court. He never flatters Augustus nor mentions his name. He scoffs at riches, glory and war, wanting nothing but to triumph as a lover. Ovid dares to group him with the laurelled shades of Catullus and Gallus, of whom the former had lampooned the divine Julius and the latter had been exiled by Augustus.

      But in spite of this contemporary succès d'estime, Tibullus is clearly a minor poet. He expresses only one aspect of his time. His few themes are oft-repeated and in monotonous rhythms. He sings of nothing greater than his own lost loves. Yet of Delia, Nemesis and Neaera, we learn only that all were fair, faithless and venal. For a man whose ideal of love was life-long fidelity, he was tragically unsuccessful.

      If this were all, his verse would have perished with that of Macer and Gallus. But it is not all. These love-poems of a private gentleman of the Augustan time, show a delicacy of sentiment almost modern. Of the ribald curses which Catullus hurls after his departing Lesbia, there is nothing. He throws the blame on others: and if, just to frighten, he describes the wretched old age of the girls who never were faithful, it is with a playful tone and hoping such bad luck will never befall any sweet-heart of his. This delicacy and tenderness, with the playful accent, are, perhaps, Tibullus' distinctive charm.

      His popularity in 18th century France was very great. The current English version, Grainger's (1755) with its cheap verse and common-place gallantries, is a stupid echo of the French feeling for Tibullus as an erotic poet. Much better is the witty prose version by the elder Mirabeau, done during the Terror, in the prison at Vincennes, and published after his release, with a ravishing portrait of Sophie, surrounded by Cupids and billing doves. One of the old Parisian editors dared to say:

      "Tons ceux qui aiment, ou qui ont jamais aimé, savent par coeur ce délicieux Tibulle."

      But it was unjust to classify Tibullus merely as an erotic poet. The gallants of the ancien régime were quite capable of writing their own valentines. Tibullus was popular as a sort of Latin Rousseau. He satirized rank, riches and glory as corrupting man's primitive simplicity. He pled for a return to nature, to country-side, thatched cottages, ploughed fields, flocks, harvests, vintages and rustic holidays. He made this plea, not with an armoury of Greek learning, such as cumber Virgil and Horace, but with an original passion. He cannot speak of the jewelled Roman coquettes without a sigh for those happy times when Phoebus himself tended cattle and lived on curds and whey, all for the love of a king's daughter.

      For our own generation Tibullus has another claim to notice. All Augustan writers express their dread and weariness of war. But Tibullus protests as a survivor of the lost cause. He has been, himself, a soldier-lover maddened by separation. As an heir of the old order, he saw how vulgar and mercenary was this parvenu imperial glory, won at the expense of lost liberties and broken hearts. War, he says, is only the strife of robbers. Its motive is the spoils. It happens because beautiful women want emeralds, Indian slaves and glimmering silk from Cos. Therefore, of course, we fight. But if Neaera and her kind would eat acorns, as of old, we could burn the navies and build cities without walls.

      He was indeed a minor poet. He does not carry forward, like Virgil, the whole heritage from the Greeks, or rise like him to idealizing the master-passion of his own

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1