SOURCE: "Gallus, Tibullus, Lygdamus, Sulpicia" in The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Horace and the Elegiac Poets, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899, pp. 223-51.

In the following excerpt, Sellar provides an overview of Tibullus, dismisses questions about his identity, discusses his love affairs, and compares and contrasts his contributions to the elegy with those of Horace and other poets.

Albius Tibullus, the next to Gallus in order of time, was a considerably younger man, although the exact date of his birth is uncertain. The evidence of his epitaph by Domitius Marsus—

Te quoque Vergilio comitem non aequa
  Tibulle
   Mors iuvenem campos misit in Elysios,
 Ne foret aut elegis molles qui fleret amores
    Aut caneret forti regia bella pede—

shows that he died, while still a young man, shortly after the death of Virgil, who died late in the year 19 B.C. This is certainly the interpretation put on the...