TIBIA, a pipe played by means of a reed mouthpiece, ex tensively used in classic Rome.
The tibia, often mistranslated "flute," was identical with the aulos (q.v.) of the Greeks, and it may be regarded as the prototype of our clarinet or oboe (qq.v.). TIBULLUS, ALBIUS (c. 54-19 B.c.), Latin elegiac poet.
The information which we pos sess about him is extremely mea gre. Besides the poems themselves—that is to say, the first and second books—we have only a few references in later writers and a short Life of doubtful authority. We do not know his praenomen; his gentile name has been questioned; nor is his birthplace ascer tained. His station was not improbably that of a Roman knight (so the Life affirms) ; and he had inherited a very considerable estate. But, like Virgil, Horace and Propertius, he seems to have lost the greater part of it in 41 amongst the confiscations which Antony and Octavian found expedient to satisfy the rapacity of their victorious soldiery. Tibullus's chief friend and patron was M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus, himself an orator and poet as well as a statesman and a commander. Messalla, like Maecenas, was the centre of a literary circle in Rome ; but the bond between its members was that of literature alone. They stood in no relations to the court; and the name of Augustus is not once to be found in the writings of Tibullus. About 3o B.C. Messalla was des patched by Augustus to Gaul to quell a rising in Aquitania and restore order in the country, and Tibullus may have been in his retinue. On a later occasion, probably in 28, he would have accompanied his friend who had been sent on a mission to the East, but he fell sick and had to stay behind in Corcyra. Tibullus had no liking for war, and though his life seems to have been divided between Rome and his country estate, his own preferences were wholly for the country life. His first love, the subject of book i., is called Delia in the poems, but we learn from Apuleius (Apol. io) that her real name was Plania. Delia seems to have been a woman of middle station. It is impossible to give an exact account of the intimacy. The poems which refer to her are arranged in no chronological order. Now she appears as single, now as married ; but we do not hear anything either of her mar riage or of her husband's death. It is clear, however, that it was the absence of her husband on military service in Cilicia which gave Tibullus the opportunity of making or renewing the acquaint ance. It was not dropped when he returned. It was not difficult to deceive the simple soldier; and Delia was an apt pupil in deception—too apt, as Tibullus saw with dismay when he found that he was not the only lover. His entreaties and appeals were of no avail; and after the first book we hear no more of Delia. In the second book the place of Delia is taken by Nemesis, which is also a fictitious name. Nemesis (like the Cynthia of Proper tius) was a courtesan of the higher class; and she had other admirers besides Tibullus. He complains bitterly of his bondage,
and of her rapacity and hardheartedness. In spite of all, however, she seems to have retained her hold on him until his death. Tibullus died prematurely, probably in 19, and almost immediately after Virgil. His death made a deep impression in Rome, as we learn from his contemporary Domitius Marsus and from the elegy in which Ovid (Amores, iii. 19) has enshrined the memory of his predecessor.
The character of Tibullus is reflected in his poems. Though not an admirable it is certainly an amiable one. He was a man of generous impulses and a gentle unselfish disposition. He was loyal to his friends to the verge of self-sacrifice, as is shown by his leaving Delia to accompany Messalla to Asia, and constant to his mistresses with a constancy but ill deserved. His tenderness towards them is enhanced by a refinement and delicacy which are rare among the ancients. Horace and the rest taunt the cruel fair with the retribution which is coming with the years. If Tibullus refers to such a fate, he does it by way of warning and not in any petty spirit of triumph or revenge. Cruelly though he may have been treated by his love, he does not invoke curses upon her head. He goes to her little sister's grave, hung so often with his garlands and wet with his tears, and bemoans his fate to the dumb ashes there. Tibullus has no leanings to an active life : his ideal is a quiet retirement in the country with the loved one at his side. He has no ambition and not even the poet's yearning for immortality. As Tibullus loved country life, so he clung to its faiths, and in an age of crude materialism and the grossest superstition, he was religious in the old Roman way. As a poet he reminds us of Collins and Longfellow. His clear, finished and yet unaffected style made him a great favourite with his countrymen and placed him, in the judgment of Quintilian, at the head of their elegiac writers. And certainly within his own range he has no Roman rival. For natural grace and tenderness, for exquisiteness of feeling and expression, he stands alone. He has far fewer faults than Propertius, and in particular he rarely overloads his lines with Alexandrian learning. But, for all that, his range is limited; and in power and compass of imagination, in vigour and originality of conception, in richness and variety of poetical treatment, he is much his rival's inferior. The same differences are perceptible in the way the two poets handle their metre. Tibullus is smoother and more musical, but liable to be come monotonous; Propertius, with occasional harshness, is more vigorous and varied. It may be added that in many of Tibullus's poems a symmetrical composition can be traced, although the symmetry must never be forced into a fixed and inelastic scheme.