Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/108

96 cheery, refined, but not foppish Roman knight; not overbearing, from having been very early his own master, but, for a Roman in his condition, of a singularly domestic character. It is clear that the court and livery of Augustus had no charms for him in comparison with the independence of his Pedan country-life, although an introduction to the former might have been had for the asking. His tone is that of an old-fashioned Conservative, disinclined to violent changes, holding the persuasion that "the old is better," and prepared to do battle for the good Saturnian times, before there were roads or ships, implements of husbandry or weapons of war. Nothing in his poems justifies the impression that his own meddling in politics had to do with whatever amount of confiscation befell him: indeed it may reasonably be assumed that, in pleading for restitution or compensation, his patron may have found his manifest aversion to politics as well as war very much in his favour. With Messala, who had fought against the Triumvirs under Cassius at Philippi, but had distinguished himself eminently at Actium on the side of Augustus, Tibullus had been early intimate, though he declined to accompany him to this decisive war in 31. Less than a year later, however, he did accompany him as aide-de-camp, or perhaps more probably as the bard of his prospective exploits, on a campaign to Aquitania, and was present at the battle of Atax (Ande in Languedoc), in which the rebel tribes were effectually quelled. In the seventh elegy of his first book, on the subject of Messala's