Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/106

94 Tibullus are scant and shadowy, and consist chiefly of an elegy of Ovid, an epistle of Horace, and a less authoritative life by an old grammarian, with the internal evidence to be extracted from the poet's acknowledged remains. As he nowhere names his sire, it is inferred that he died whilst he was yet a youth; but there are frequent and loving notices of his mother and sister. Apparently his family estates had been confiscated at the time of Cæsar's death, and his fortunes had undergone the same partial collapse which befell his poetic contemporaries, Horace and Virgil; but, like them, he clearly succeeded in recovering at least a portion of his patrimony, and this apparently by the good offices of his great patron, M. Valerius Messala, a chief of the ancient aristocracy, who, after the fashion of Mæcenas and Agrippa, kept up a retinue and mimic court of versifiers, and, it must be allowed, exacted no more of them than was his honest due. It was at Pedum, on his patrimonial estate between Tibur and Præneste, some nineteen miles from Rome, that he passed the best portion of his brief but mainly placid life, amidst such scenes and employments as best fitted his rural tastes, indifferent health, and simple, contemplative, affectionate nature. In his very first elegy, he describes himself in strict keeping with his eminently religious spirit—which, it has been well remarked, bade him fold his hands in resignation rather than open them in hope—wreathing the god Terminus at the cross-roads, paying first-fruits to Ceres, setting up a Priapus to scare bird-pirates from his orchards, and honouring the Lares