ABSTRACT
Qu i n t i l i a n ’ s critical estimate o f the four Roman elegists is well known: Elegia quoque Graecos provocamus, cuius mihi tersus atque elegans m axim videtur auctor Tibullus. Sunt qui Propertium malint. Ovidius utroque lascivior, sicut durior Gallus. (In elegy, too, we rival the Greeks. Tibullus seems to me the most polished and elegant o f the elegists. There are those who prefer Propertius. Ovid is more playful than either, just as Gallus is harsher: Quint. X . 1.93.) Today the number o f those qui Propertium malint has probably increased at the expense o f Tibullus; Propertius has on his side judges so different as Housman and Pound. Quintilian’s judge ment o f Gallus has been ratified by an unkind fate which has left us only one line o f his work. The most marked agreement o f modern critics with Quintilian, however, is the preference for both Tibullus and Propertius over Ovid. Postgate’s opinion, written in the height o f the Victorian period, represents the still prevailing attitude toward Ovid: ‘His calm surface is most rarely disturbed by genuine feeling. With Tibullus and Propertius love was at any rate a passion. With Ovid it was me affaire de coeur’ 1 It is interesting to note the apparent agreement between the ancient critic and the modern, but it is more important to observe that the criteria by which they reached their judgements are significantly different. Postgate and most moderns have preferred Propertius (or Tibullus) because they find a ‘sincerity’ which they miss in Ovid. Classical criticism approached the matter differently.
