ABSTRACT
The first poem of an Augustan poetry book is generally programmatic, and this poem can be and has been read as introducing the poetic biases and allegiances that will inform Tibullus' work. Tibullus published his first collection of elegies between late 27 and 25 b.c.e., at a time when Ovid was about 15 and just after Propertius had produced his Monobiblos. Tibullus' poems are more intimate and withdrawn than the hexameter poems in the aforementioned books. In length, they are longer than the standard love elegy, and they recall on the one hand the precedent set by Catullus 68 and on the other the general length of Vergil's Eclogues. Tibullus employs many features of a solemn hymnic style to heighten his effects: repetitions of words, contrasts of then and now, and direct appeals to the gods.
