Elegiae

About this book

This is the first full and detailed commentary on the second book of Tibullus' elegies since K. F. Smith's edition of 1913. It takes into account every significant advance in scholarship since then both on Tibullus and elegy in general. The book provides an authoritative Latin text, based on the definitive Oxford Classical Text; an introduction covering such topics as the chronology of Book II, its completeness and construction, and the main characters of the poems; and a comprehensive commentary discussing all aspects of linguistic and literary interest in the poems: the problems of reference and interpretation, for instance, as well diction, style, themes, and metre. There are also introductory essays on each poem, discussing the background situation, genre, and main models. A critical appendix looks at all the textual points that substantially affect the understanding and appreciation of the elegies, a structural appendix explores the structure of the individual poems, and there are full indices.

Themes & subjects

About the author

Albius Tibullus

ca. 54 BC – ca. 19 BC

Albius Tibullus (ca. 55-19 BC) was a Latin poet and writer of elegies. Little is known about his life. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to Tibullus are of questionable origins. There are only a few references to him in later writers and a short Life of doubtful authority. His praenomen is not known, nor is his birthplace and his gentile name has been questioned. His status was probably that of a Roman knight (so the Life affirms); and he had inherited a considerable estate. But, like Virgil, Horace and Propertius, he seems to have lost most of it in 41 BC amongst the confiscations of Mark Antony and Octavian. (<a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…