SOURCE: "The Symbolic Structure of Tibullus Book I," Latomus, Vol. XXIX, No. 3, July-September, 1970, pp. 661-69.

In the following essay, Littlewood examines the structure of Tibullus's Book 1, describing it as harmonious and logical.

The last twenty-five years of Classical scholarship have seen such great advances in the study of structural symmetry and its significance in the works of the Augustan poets that now there is no longer any doubt that this aspect of artistic ingenuity was a recognised concept of Augustan art¹. It is here of considerable importance to note that the structural harmonies involved are always subtly devised not only to produce a beauty of form but more essentially to imbue a book as a whole with a deeper import deriving from the poet's own convictions. That this might be on a purely personal and human level has been ably demonstrated by Otis² in his interpretation of Propertius...