Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/128

116 been supposed that the thirteenth elegy of the fourth book may be a sample of the "miserable or dolorous elegies" which he wrote to her, and to which Horace alludes; but if so, it "protests too much," exhibits too little independence, and rests too seriously upon Glycera for his happiness, to be likely to hold her affections. Women of her class are not really of one mind with the love-sick wooer who wishes "the desert were his dwelling-place, with one sweet spirit for his minister;" or, as Tibullus's mode of expressing the same sentiment is Englished—

Glycera must have preferred a crowd of a more normal character, for ere long (it would seem within four or five years after the rupture with Delia) he is found in the toils of the mercenary and avaricious Nemesis, to whom he addressed the love elegies of the second book. If his amour with Glycera may be dated 24 or 23, the connection with Nemesis, who saw the last of him, began about the year  21. It does not seem to have had the excuse of such attractions as were possessed by Delia, for the poet is silent as to her personal beauty, although she exercised that influence over him, and made those exacting demands on his finances, which bespeak a fascination quite as overmastering. When we first hear of her, she has left him for the country (El. iii. bk. 2), and as he puts in the most exquisite of vignettes—