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).

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 age, that vision of a cosmopolitan world-state, centred at Rome and based upon eternal decrees of Fate and Jove. But neither was he duped, as Virgil was, into mistaking the blood-bought empire of the Caesars for the return of Saturn's reign. Sometimes a minor poet, just by reason of his aloofness from the social trend of his time, may also escape its limitations, and sound some notes which remain forever true to what is unchanging in the human heart. I believe Tibullus has done so.

This translation has been done in the play-time of many busy years. I have used what few helps I could find, especially the Mirabeau, above alluded to. The text is often doubtful. But in so rambling a writer it has not seemed to me that the laborious transpositions of later German editors were important. I have rejected as probably spurious all of the fourth book but two short pieces. While I agree with those who find the third book doubtful, I have included it.

But from scholars I must ask indulgence. I have translated with latitude, considering whole phrases rather than single words. But I have always been faithful to the thought and spirit of the original, except in the few passages where euphemism was required. If the reader who has no Latin, gets a pleasing impression of Tibullus, that is what I have chiefly hoped to do. In my forth-coming translations of the Aeneid I have kept stricter watch upon verbal accuracy, as is due to an author better-known and more to be revered.