Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius/Chapter 9
CHAPTER III.
TIBULLUS IN HIS CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS CAPACITY.
Though on a cursory glance it might appear that Tibullus was wholly absorbed in his loves, and when suffering depression through their ill success took a gloomy view of the world's moral government, no careful student of his poetry can fail to notice how stanch an observer he was of the old rites and customs of his fathers, and how much the punctual fulfilment of the ancient ritual of his country's religion, to say nothing of its later and foreign accretions, was a law to him. In keeping with this characteristic religiousness, he duly reverenced with offerings of first-fruits the lone stump or old garland-wreathed stone which represented the god of the country in the fields or crossways, he duly kept the holidays of the Roman Calendar, he offered to the Genius customary and propitiatory sacrifices on his own or his patrons' birthdays. Hence, as well as for the collateral lore which pious performance of such ceremonies would accumulate, one special phase of interest in his poetry is, so to speak, antiquarian; and modern readers may look to him not in vain for light upon at least the rustic festivals of Italy, some of which find a curious parallel in old English customs growing daily more nearly obsolete. One very remarkable example is the Festival of the Ambarvalia, to which Tibullus devotes the first elegy of his second book, in a description which is, along with a well-known passage of the First Georgic of Virgil, a chief locus classicus touching this rural celebration. That which the poet describes must be regarded as the private festival held towards the end of April by the head of every family, and not the public and national feast performed by the Fratres Arvales in May. This festival, held in honour not of Ceres only, as it might seem from Virgil, but of Mars also, as we gather from Cato's treatise on Rustic matters, and, as we learn from Catullus, of Bacchus and the gods of the family, and even Cupid, took its name from the chief feature—of the victim offered on the occasion being thrice solemnly led round the fields before the first sheaf of corn was reaped, or the first bunch of grapes cut. In its train followed the reapers, vine-pruners, farm-servants, dancing and singing praise to Ceres or Bacchus, and making libations of honey, wine, and milk. The object was the purification and hallowing of themselves, their herds, their fields and fruits, by the rural population of Latium; and it was supposed to keep plague and pestilence from the border which the procession perambulated. As to the victim, an earlier admission of Tibullus in the course of his poems lets us into the fact that with him, owing to his circumstances, it was only a lamb, whereas richer worshippers offered either a calf, or sometimes a lamb, calf, and sow (suovetaurilia) together; but in all cases the festival wound up with a carousal and jollification for all concerned, and furnished to the rural population a picturesque and looked-for anniversary. Those who are curious in finding parallels and origins for their own country's old customs will trace to the Ambarvalia the "Gang-days" or walkings of the parish bounds in religious procession, which still linger in old English parishes and boroughs, and which at the Reformation were substituted for a festival celebrated in the Latin Church during three days at Whitsuntide. In this, one main object seems to have been to solicit God's blessing on the land and its crops; and intimately connected with the ceremonial which led to Rogation Days being called Gang-days, was a customary procession. Feasting, also, and revelry, were not forgotten; though in the present day the sole surviving feature is, here and there, perambulation of the boundaries—a relic, doubtless, of the very lustration of which Tibullus gives the prettiest picture extant. According to him, the whole face of nature was to keep holiday, whether animate or inanimate, in honour of Bacchus, Ceres, and their associate deities. Even women were to lay by their spindles, and with ablutions, purifications, and white raiment, place themselves in accord with so pure a festival:—
Hang up the share, and give all ploughing o'er;
Unstrap the yokes. Each ox, with chaplets drest,
Should feed at large a well-filled stall before.
White crowds behind with olive fillets bound;
That evil from our borders may be sped,
Thus, gods of home, we lustrate hind and ground.
And from our acres banish blight and bale,
Lest hollow ears should mock our hope of grain,
Or 'gainst weak lambs the fleeter wolf prevail.
Logs on a blazing hearth shall cheerly pile;
And slaves, by whom their master's ease we ken,
Frolic, and wattle bowers of twigs the while."
—(C. ii. 1. 5-24.) D.
From the immediate context we gather that, if the auspices were favourable on the showing of this rural sacrifice, it was a signal for general relaxation and merry-making. Tibullus would call for Falernian of a prime old brand, and broach a cask of Chian to boot. The revelry which in his view of things would appropriately follow, reminds one of the orgies in which, according to the song, "no man rose to go till he was sure he could not stand." Constant toasting of absent friends and patrons induced a moistness and a reeling gait, which on this occasion was not a reproach, or shame, but quite the contrary. It was, says Tibullus, a usage of primeval precedent in the golden age of man's innocency, when first the rural gods bore a hand in instructing him to harvest his fruits, and Bacchus assisted in organising the choral song and dance which celebrated such harvests. Even Cupid, who was country-born and country-bred, should be bidden, he adds, to this rural ceremonial, for it makes all the difference whether the flock and its master experience the smile or frown of the much-praised god:—
'Mongst sheep and cattle and unbroken mares;
There with unskilful bow he practised first,—
Now what a skilful hand the weapon bears.
Not cattle now, as heretofore, his prey,
But blooming maids and men of stalwart frame;
He robs the youth and makes the greybeard say,
At scornful maiden's threshold, words of shame."
But, if he comes, he is to leave aside his bow, and hide his torches. The date of this elegy is probably the year B.C. 23.
In the fifth elegy of the second book, to which allusion has been already made as that in which Messala's eldest son, Messalinus, is complimented on his election into the College of Fifteen, one picture or episode of rural life describes the festival of the Palilia. This was a very ancient Italian holiday, partaking even more than the Ambarvalia of the character of a lustration, inasmuch as in it fire and water were used to purify shepherds and sheep, hinds, herds, and farm-buildings. This festival fell on the traditionary birthday of the city of Rome, and was kept in honour of Pales, the tutelary goddess of shepherds, such as were Rome's founders. To her were offered prayers, and sacrifices of cakes, millet, milk, and various eatables,—one solemn preliminary, according to Ovid, being the composition of the smoke with which stalls, sheep, and shepherds were purified. In the evening, after the lustration, bonfires were lighted, through the smoke of which the flocks were driven with their shepherds thrice; a second purification, to which succeeded an open-air feasting on turf benches. To this festival, which is fully described by Ovid in his 'Fasti' (iv. 731, &c.), allusion is made also in the Elegies of Propertius (v. iv. 75. Paley). The picture as given by Tibullus may be here represented, with a note or two, from the version of Mr Cranstoun:—
With wine, shall sing: then wolves be far away.
Wine-maddened, he will fire the stubble-heap,
And through the sacred flames with ardour leap.
His wife will bring her boy his heart to cheer,
To snatch a kiss, and pull his father's ear.
Nor will the grandsire grudge to tend the boy,
But prattle with the child in doting joy.
The worship o'er, the youths upon the glade
Will lie beneath some old tree's glancing shade;
Or with their garments screen their rustic bowers,
Fill full the bowl, and crown the wine with flowers;
Each bring his feast, and pile green turf on high,
Turf that shall festive board and couch supply.
Where drunk, the youth his sweetheart will upbraid,
And shortly after wish his words unsaid.
Though bearish now, he'll sober down to-morrow,
Swear he was mad, and shed the tear of sorrow."
—(C., p. 62, 63.)
The italicised epithets have been inserted as more literal, and the italicised lines as needing illustration. The custom of leaping through the fire, under the notion of being purified by the smoke, is alluded to by Propertius likewise; and is said by Mr Keightley to be still kept up in parts of Ireland and Scotland. The seemingly disrespectful liberty taken by the child with his father's ears, is explained by the peculiar and playful kiss, given by a person to another whose ears he held by way of handles, which Greeks and Romans occasionally practised, and which was called by the latter chutra. As to the old tree at the village centre, the cross-roads, or district boundary, it belongs to all time, and was the natural trysting-place for the festival of Pales, as many an ancient oak or elm discharges a like office, or designates a like tryst, in our English counties.
The scrupulousness with which Tibullus kept these rural festivals, observed his dues to Ceres, Silvanus, and the Lares, and set up a Priapus in his orchard, accommodated against stress of weather by a shady grot, might or might not be taken as an argument that two elegies in the third and fourth books, alluding to the Matronalia, were from his muse, and not another's. One so wrapt up in the country may have done all, when he had discharged his duties to the deities presiding over it; or, on the other hand, one who made so much of birthdays and anniversaries, might have made a point of including among his special feasts the first day of the first month (March) of the sacerdotal year, the festival Matronalia in honour of Juno, the goddess of married women, a season when not only husbands but lovers were wont to present their loves with gifts, designated strenæ, the étrennes of New Year's Day in Paris. The first elegy of the third book draws a lively picture of the stir and bustle of a day not unlike St Valentine's morning in its latest development; and the second in the fourth book, an elegant and erotic performance, commends Sulpicia's beauty as she appears dressed for this festival. Neither, however, has the detail and the descriptiveness of Tibullus's pictures of the rural feasts. Both may well have emanated from one of Messala's set of protégés; but any one imbued with the tone and spirit of his genuine elegies will hesitate to admit these into that category. But this same scrupulousness and exactness to which we have referred, besides attesting the religious spirit, according to the light that was in him, of Albius Tibullus, extended itself to his civil status and conduct, in relation to the powers that then were. Not improbably he was at heart an old-fashioned waif and stray of the republic, for whom it was enough to be admitted to the literary circle of that virtuous representative of the old Roman nobles, Messala; and who, while acquiescing in the imperial rule from inability, and probably disinclination, to take a prominent or active part in politics or social matters, made a point of maintaining his independence, by keeping aloof from the cohort of the bards of the empire. Though Ovid can elegise his tuneful predecessor in strains which were no more than justly due to one to whom his own poetry owed not a little, and imagine him in death associated with Catullus, Calvus, Gallus, and other poets, we do not find Tibullus cultivating or even naming Augustus or his ministers, or the members of his literary coteries. How much or little Horace knew of him depends upon the genial Venusian's evidence in a single ode and a single epistle; and that evidence does not go for much. There is nothing to prove that his goodwill was warmly reciprocated; whilst Ovid, who was much junior to Tibullus, did not enjoy his personal friendship. There is, at all events, considerable negative evidence that our poet valued and cherished his independence; and good ground for believing that he maintained it. Whether there is enough to justify Dean Merivale's theory, "That he pined away in unavailing despondency in beholding the subjugation of his country," it would be hard to pronounce, in the face of his slightly unpatriotic and un-Roman deprecation of military service, his fondness for ease and rustication, and his undeniable life of somewhat Anacreontic self-pleasing; but on the other hand, there is ample ground for the idea, broached and shadowed forth by the same eminent historian, that Tibullus "alone of the great poets of his day remained undazzled by the glitter of the Cæsarian usurpation."[1] Akin to this independence of principle is Tibullus's exceptional independence in literary style: whilst all his contemporaries were addicting themselves to Greek mythology and Alexandrine models, he stood alone in choice of themes and scenes best suited to his purely Italian genius. His terse, clear, simple language, as well as thought, distinguish him equally from the learning and imagination of Catullus, and the artificial phraseology and constantly-involved constructions of Propertius. He deserves the meed of natural grace and unrestrained simplicity, and ranks amongst his elegiac contemporaries as par excellence the poet of nature. In some respects his genius might compare with that of Burns, though in others the likeness fails; and perhaps it is owing to his limited range of subjects that he has not been more translated into English. Dart's translation, as well as that of Grainger, is almost forgotten; the partial translations of Major Packe and Mr Hopkins quite so. A few neat versions of Tibullus which occur in 'Specimens of the Classic Poets,' are due to Charles Abraham Elton, the scholarly translator of Hesiod; but it is to Mr James Cranstoun that the English reader who wishes to know more of this poet than can be learned in a comparatively brief memoir and estimate, must incur a debt such as we have incurred in the foregoing pages.
- ↑ History of Rome under the Empire, iv. 602.