Albius Tibullus, considered along with Ovid and Propertius one of the canonical elegists of the Augustan period, was in antiquity deemed the most accomplished of the three. Quintilian sums it up nicely: “In my opinion Tibullus is a very elegant and concise author. There are those who prefer Propertius.” Modern critics, however, have not always been as favorable. The dreamlike quality of Tibullus’s text is sometimes cited as evidence that his poems are smooth or soft, and lacking formal integrity. Paul Allen Miller argues instead for seeing them as a complex tissue of related, interwoven, and sometimes contradictory themes. Miller’s commentary, informed by modern scholarship, accepts the challenge of elucidating the often complex logic of the selected poems.

This selection of Latin readings, drawn from texts in a variety of genres across four centuries, aims to provide a comprehensive and accurate picture of the images and realities of women in Roman antiquity. Depicted in the readings are both historical and fictional women, of varying ages and at different stages of life, from a range of social classes, and from different locales. We see them dramatized—sometimes in their own words—in the roles the women actually played, as wives and mothers, friends and lovers. This Reader differs from others in showing women in explicitly erotic roles, in drawing some of its passages from "archaic" Latin, and in encouraging a variety of critical approaches, all suitable for its intended college-level audience.