Author: Paul Allen Miller
Product Code: 7249
ISBN: 978-0-86516-724-7

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.