期刊名称：Ka Mate Ka Ora : a New Zealand Journal of Poetry and Poetics
印刷版ISSN：1177-2182
出版年度：2012
卷号：2012
期号：11
出版社：The New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre
摘要：Albus Tibullus was a Roman poet probably born around 55 BCE and who died in 19 BCE at the age of around thirty-six. He wrote poems in elegiac couplets, like his younger contemporaries Propertius and Ovid, most of them on the subject of his various lovers, male and female. Two books survive, a total of only sixteen poems (more were attributed to him, but none of these are now generally accepted as his). Comparatively little is known about his life. He seems to have been from a wealthy Roman family of “equestrian” rank that suffered from the land confiscations of Mark Antony and Octavian during the civil wars following the collapse of the Roman Republic. He served in the Roman army under his friend and patron, Messalla, probably around the age of twenty-five, but withdrew from military life, which he seems to have strongly disliked, and retired to his family estate. His early death shocked his contemporaries. After his death his poetry continued to be read and praised by poets and critics, but it has not often been translated into English. The poem discussed here is the opening poem of his surviving collection, in which he speaks of the reduction of his family estate and sets himself to embrace simple, traditional activities and pleasures, setting aside in particular the call to advancement through military glory.
