ABSTRACT
Sulpicia The third manuscript of Tibullus is a collection of elegies by various poets affiliated with Messana. Five poems go by the name, "Garland of Sulpicia" (see below), and concern Sulpicia. The next group of poems, III 13-18, are by Sulpicia herself. She identifies herself as "Sulpicia, daughter of Servius" (III 16. 3-4), and was, by our best guesses, a niece of the literary patron, M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus (see III 14. S-6), and daughter of Servius Sulpicius Rufus, cos. 51 B.C. E., a jurisconsult, friend of Caesar, and according to Cicero, a man of noble character. She tells us that her lover is Cerinthus, a name which by the standard convention of elegy is a Greek metrical equivalent for the beloved's real name. Some have suggested that the real lover is the Comutus of Tibullus II 2, but there can be no certainty. The name Cerinthus, which means "bee-bread," may imply both the sweetness of honey, which was a common metaphor for poetical sweetness, and the activity of bees, in whose movement from flower to flower poets found an analogy for their own work.
