Selections from Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid

This is the first intermediate-student edition of a selection of Latin love elegy. Propertius 1.1, 1.3 and 2.14, Tibullus 1.1 and 1.3 and Ovid's Amores 1.1, 2.5, 2.7 and 2.8 are included as Latin text with an accompanying commentary and vocabulary. Focusing on a deliberately limited number of poems, this edition is designed to be manageable for students reading the text for the first time while also perfectly encapsulating the interest of elegy as a genre and inspiring further study of it. A detailed introduction explains points of historical and stylistic interest, and includes analysis of three further poems: Propertius 4.7, Tibullus 2.4 and Ovid Amores 2.19.

Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid are our three main writers of Latin love elegy. The selected poems depict the bitter-sweet love affairs of the poet-lovers and their mistresses, from the heartbreak of rejection to the elation at love reciprocated. While Propertius's and Ovid's setting is the city and their poems show us such details of urbane Roman life as drinking parties and elaborate hair-dressing, Tibullus introduces the idyll of the countryside to the genre. Their sophisticated poems combine intense emotion with wit and irony, and celebrate the life of love and their mistresses, Propertius's Cynthia, Tibullus's Delia and Nemesis, and Ovid's Corinna.