Kevin's Classics

Prelude I have continued my efforts of translating Tibullus's elegies and after the wearisome wars of the 1.10, I was up for a more open amatory poem directed to the main love interest of the poet, his mistress Delia. Not wanting to go all the way back to the beginning, I split the difference and simply started on elegy 5 which was rather more complex than I thought at first sight. The first 18 lines adresses the poem's ego's feeling of torment about the break-up with Delia, which he finds extra harsh after having done a lot to save her from a harsh disease ( morbus tristis (9) ). Lines 19-36 form an "idyllic vignette", an description of a farm house with wheat-fields, sheepfolds and vineyards, similar to the estate described in poem 1.1. After the forsaken dream starts the second part of the poem, in which there's a change of atmosphere. Here we see how the poem's ego tries to forget his sorrows with wine and woman, but to no avail. And we find out that ...

One thing is certain. In love and in war, every promise is empty.

I have finally finished the first translation of my Translating Tibullus project (i.e. the last poem of book 1 about which I made an earlier post a couple of weeks ago). During the translation process, I came across some interesting themes in this poem, including the nature of death, idealisation of military life, and much more. But for now, I will not have you read the whole poem since I don't want to share my whole work immediately with you: patience is virtue. Instead, I will focus on the ending of the poem as this was most thought-provoking, heart-warming, and eye-opening.

After having posted a translation out of the blue on Tuesday , I return to it on Thursday. In today's post, I revisit the genre of Roman elegiac love poetry and how Tibullus fits into that genre. I  will explain why I started with Elegy 10 and how it relates to Tibullus's other Elegies in book 1. To conclude, I will add some remarks to my Dutch translation (and discuss some emendations). Hopefully, you have obtained a better understanding of the poem!

As you have read from the title, this topic will be Tibullus Elegies. This particular work fascinates me and I am going to attempt to translate the first two books into Dutch since the most recent translation is from the year I was born.