Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/133



on a cursory glance it might appear that Tibullus was wholly absorbed in his loves, and when suffering depression through their ill success took a gloomy view of the world's moral government, no careful student of his poetry can fail to notice how stanch an observer he was of the old rites and customs of his fathers, and how much the punctual fulfilment of the ancient ritual of his country's religion, to say nothing of its later and foreign accretions, was a law to him. In keeping with this characteristic religiousness, he duly reverenced with offerings of first-fruits the lone stump or old garland-wreathed stone which represented the god of the country in the fields or crossways, he duly kept the holidays of the Roman Calendar, he offered to the Genius customary and propitiatory sacrifices on his own or his patrons' birthdays. Hence, as well as for the collateral lore which pious performance of such ceremonies would accumulate, one special phase of interest in his poetry is, so to speak, antiquarian; and modern readers may look to him not in vain for light upon at least the rustic