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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2013
In considering whether or not this poem is genuine Tibullus we have only internal evidence to go on. Internal evidence is often not conclusive enough. It is difficult to assess, and the assessment usually involves a subjective element. The ideal is to reduce this subjective element to a minimum, to appeal to logic in the way a textual critic does when he chooses one MS reading rather than another or decides to admit an emendation of the text. The textual critic's choice of reading or the truth of his emendation cannot be proved in the way a madiematical theorem can be proved, but none the less we can know that the critic is right or wrong on grounds of probability, which in this field is the only available criterion.
I want now to point to the kind of internal evidence I shall appeal to: it is literary reminiscence, or imitation. Most often no deductions at all about priority can be drawn from parallel passages in different authors; one simply notes them and that is that. But sometimes a deduction about priority can be made. Under what conditions? And precisely how? To answer these questions I shall quote an example from English poetry, because it is particularly instructive to see ‘imitation’ at work in one's own language.
page 4 note 1 Hellenica, 1 (1940), 16f.
page 4 note 2 Cf. Hanfmann, G., The Season Sarcophagus at Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard, 1951), pp. 77f.Google Scholar
page 4 note 3 The text quoted is taken from Hood, 's final version in The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, etc. (London, 1827), pp. 170–3.Google Scholar
page 5 note 1 See his article in the Journal of Philology, IX (1880), 280–5 and his Selections from Tibullus (Macmillan, London, 1922), Appendix c.
page 6 note 1 Cf. Axelson, Bertil in Eranos, LVIII, 1960, 108–10.Google Scholar
page 6 note 2 Text from Postgate, , Selections from Tibullus (London, 1922).Google Scholar
page 8 note 1 To read Venus in l. 14 with a capital and take the word as the subject of mittatur in 13 with amica predicative is possible but most unlikely for die following reasons: (i) either deficiet would have to mean ‘she will fail in her purpose’, a meaning die word cannot have, or Venus would have to mean desire in the second half of die sentence, having meant the goddess herself in the first half, which is thoroughly awkward; (ii) Olympian goddesses are not sent anywhere nor could they decendy be described as amicae; (iii) die word ipsa would be needed in the first half of the sentence to make the point properly.
page 8 note 2 On p. 185 of his very thorough discussion of this poem in Navicula Chiloniensis [a Festschrift for Felix Jacoby] (Brill, Leiden, 1956), pp. 173–90, Tibulls früheste Liebeselegie?
page 9 note 1 So too Lenz, , Ein Liebesgedicht Tibulls (4, 13)Google Scholar, Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica, x, 2 (1933), 125–45.
page 10 note 1 I am indebted to Mr W. A. Camps, Mr E. J. Kenney and Mr F. H. Sandbach for criticisms of this paper in an earlier form.