War, he says, is
only the strife of robbers. Its motive is the spoils. It happens because
beautiful women want emeralds, Indian slaves and glimmering silk from
Cos. Therefore, of course, we fight. But if Neaera and her kind would
eat acorns, as of old, we could burn the navies and build cities without
walls.
He was indeed a minor poet. He does not carry forward, like Virgil, the
whole heritage from the Greeks, or rise like him to idealizing the
master-passion of his own age, that vision of a cosmopolitan
world-state, centred at Rome and based upon eternal decrees of Fate and
Jove. But neither was he duped, as Virgil was, into mistaking the
blood-bought empire of the Caesars for the return of Saturn's reign.
Sometimes a minor poet, just by reason of his aloofness from the social
trend of his time, may also escape its limitations, and sound some notes
which remain forever true to what is unchanging in the human heart. I
believe Tibullus has done so.
This translation has been done in the play-time of many busy years. I
have used what few helps I could find, especially the Mirabeau, above
alluded to.
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