SOURCE: "Is There a Religion of Love in Tibullus?," The Classical Journal, Vol. 73, No. 1, October-November, 1977, pp. 1-10.

In the following essay, Palmer contends that the strength of Tibullus's poetry results from his use of antitheses and syntheses.

Ever since 1905 when F. Jacoby's article on origins appeared, numerous attempts have been made to reduce the Latin love elegy to a limited series of motifs and topoi which were then referred back to their apparent sources in Hellenistic poetry or before.¹ Behind this search often lay the unspoken assumption that the identification of these motifs and their sources would eventually produce the evidence needed to solve the vexing problems of origins.² In any case it would help us understand the clusters of ideas which the elegists of the first century B.C. used as counters as they participated in the game of love.

This preoccupation with motifs soon led to...