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

Two thousand years later, Tibullus still speaks to anyone who has ever chosen love over ambition. This Roman poet, writing in the golden age of Augustus, crafted verses of startling emotional honesty beneath their polished surface - tender, jealous, yearning, forever caught between desire and disillusionment. His elegies trace the arc of a lover's heart: the bliss of new passion, the agony of betrayal, the longing for a simple life far from Rome's corrupt wealth and political chaos. Delia, his muse, remains one of literature's most haunting figures - alternately devoted and faithless, inspiring poems that ache with both tenderness and betrayal. What makes Tibullus remarkable is the passion simmering beneath his elegant surface. He was dismissed for centuries as too smooth, too gentle - but read closely and you'll find a man undone by love, writing with a vulnerability that feels almost modern. This edition includes the surprising work of Sulpicia, one of Rome's few female poets, adding another voice to this intimate circle of lovers and dreamers.