Corpus Tibullianum, Book 3

Book 3 of the Corpus Tibullianum consists of a number of discrete sections, composed at different periods and probably assembled as a book in the course of the 2nd century ce. This collection was then added to the two genuine books of Tibullus by the end of the 4th century, when echoes from poems 3.19 and 3.7 are quoted alongside passages from the genuine Tibullus in the poems of Ausonius and Avienus. The different sections of Book 3 are as follows: poems 1–6 (Lygdamus), composed after Ovid’s late works, probably at the end of the 1st century ce; poem 7 (Panegyricus Messallae), perhaps from the 2nd century ce; poems 8–12 (Sulpicia Cycle), immediately after Ovid’s late works, around 20 ce; poems 13–18 (Sulpicia), from the end of the 1st century bce; poem 19 (Pseudo-Tibullus), written after Ovid’s Tristia and Remedia, a little later than 2 ce; and poem 20, a concluding epigram of uncertain date, perhaps early 1st century ce. The dating and authorship of these various sections are still subject to scholarly discussion, but the above account represents an emerging consensus. How these poems by different authors were collected together remains a mystery. All can be connected in some way or another with Tibullus’s patron Messalla Corvinus, his niece Sulpicia, or themes found in the chief poet of his circle, Tibullus. The ultimate source may have been the archives of the family of Messalla. The collection will have begun with the Sulpicia poems, written in Messalla’s lifetime, to which will first have been added the closely related Sulpicia Cycle. Lygdamus seems to have known both these sets of poems and probably came next, and finally would have come the Panegyricus Messallae, the only hexameter work in the collection, probably written as a school exercise long after the death of its addressee. The pseudo-Tibullan poem 19, and the short closing epigram, poem 20, could have been added when the final collection was put together. Whoever put together the collection in its final form showed much skill in the order of arrangement of the poems, highlighting correspondences between the various sections.