Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/107

Rh with the offering of a lambkin, the substitution of which for the fatted calf of earlier days betrays the diminution of his fortunes. As Mr Cranstoun translates, the poet's admission runs thus:—

The probable dates of his allusions to changed fortunes, in the first book of elegies, forbid the conjecture of some of his biographers that these arose from his lavish expenditure on his mistresses; and it is certainly not so much of a dilapidated roué as of one who lived simply and within his income and means, that the shrewd-judging Horace wrote in Epistle iv. (Book I.)—

Judging of him by his writings, and those of his friends, Tibullus, then, would strike us as a genial,