Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/123

Rh and wondered why, as his desires were so simple, some adverse god denied him their fruition. He cannot tax his memory with sacrilege or slight to Venus, and protests that if he can have done any wrong unwittingly, he is ready to make full atonement. Possessed, however, of a conviction at whose door the estrangement of Delia is to be laid, he ends his elegy with a warning to the successful lover that his turn is to follow. This warning illustrates the fate of the trifler with affection and mocker of love, who in his old age succumbs to its chains himself, and whom his neighbours see—

This spitting into the bosom, a coarse and superstitious deprecation of evil or distasteful objects and consequences, common to the ancients, and still common among the Greeks, means in this case contempt for the old lover caught in his own toils, and may possibly be meant to convey a sly hint to Delia that

By the next year apparently, the date of the fifth elegy, matters are worse between Tibullus and Delia;