SOURCE: "Simple Tibullus, or the Ruse of Style," Yale French Studies, No. 45, 1970, pp. 21-32.

In the following essay, Putnam asserts that Tibullus's simplicity is purposefully deceiving and that his understated stance disguises a "poetics of action."

Of the three surviving elegists of the Roman Augustan age, Tibullus is little read, less appreciated. Propertius fascinates by his intensity, his gnarled propulsion of idea which forces careful attention to the process as well as the wholeness of a poem. Ovid's facile warmth and smooth irony win ready admirers. With Tibullus praise was not always so faint. A younger contemporary of Virgil (he died the same year, 19 B. C.), he is mentioned twice with affectionate concern by Horace whereas Propertius receives but a passing jibe. Ovid in the Amores elegizes his death and on more than one subsequent occasion shows a preference for Tibullus, a judgment that Quintilian forthrightly echoes two...