We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2017
Delia, the name given to Tibullus’ mistress in five of the poems in the first book of his elegies (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.5, 1.6), has long inspired curiosity. Two approaches have dominated discussion. The biographical approach takes its cue from the Apology of Apuleius (10), which regards Delia as a pseudonym:
eadem igitur opera accusent C. Catullum, quod Lesbiam pro Clodia nominarit, et Ticidam similiter, quod quae Metella erat Perillam scripserit, et Propertium, qui Cynthiam dicat, Hostiam dissimulet, et Tibullum, quod ei sit Plania in animo, Delia in uersu.
1 The evidence is conveniently assembled and discussed in Maltby, R., Tibullus: Elegies. Text, Introduction and Commentary (Cambridge, 2002), 42–5Google Scholar. The text of Tibullus is cited from this edition.
2 See Kennedy, D.F., The Arts of Love: Five Studies in the Discourse of Roman Love Elegy (Cambridge, 1993), 88Google Scholar.
3 Delia is first attested in Latin in Verg. Ecl. 3.67, apparently as the name of the mistress of Menalcas (though this has been disputed since antiquity; see the note of Clausen, W.V., Virgil Eclogues [Oxford, 1995]Google Scholar, ad loc.), and as a cult-title of Diana at Ecl. 7.29. On the latter passage, Clausen notes that, although Δήλιος was an established cult-title of Apollo, Δηλία was not usually so used of Diana, and suspects that this is Virgil's innovation. Comedy frequently attests to the use of island names as a way to refer to a hetaera-figure (‘the girl from …’, e.g. Chrysis in Menander's Samia and in Terence's Andria), and this is carried on in Catullus’ Lesbia. Delia is the title of comedies attributed to Aristophanes and to Sophilus, as CQ’s anonymous referee points out.
4 Lee, A.G., ‘ Otium cum indignitate: Tibullus 1.1’, in Woodman, T. and West, D. (edd.), Quality and Pleasure in Latin Poetry (Cambridge, 1974), 94–114 Google Scholar, at 107–8.
5 Lee, A.G., Tibullus, Elegies: Introduction, Text, Translation and Notes (Leeds, 1990 3), 3Google Scholar; for a defence of this reading, cf. id. (n. 4), 107.
6 Cf. OLD s.v. iners 3.
7 iners recurs in 1.1.71, iam subrepet iners aetas, neque amare decebit, which further extends the interaction of military and erotic associations of the adjective developed in the poem; cf. Lee-Stecum, P., Powerplay in Tibullus: Reading Elegies Book One (Cambridge, 1998), 62Google Scholar.
8 Briefly: rather than break down the door of the obdurate master of the house (presumably the coniunx of Delia, cf. 1.2.43), he wishes for the rain and thunderbolts of Jupiter to strike it (ianua difficilis domini, te uerberet imber, | te Iouis imperio fulmina missa petant, 1.2.7-8), and then prays that the door, overcome not by his shoulder or fists but by his complaints, open without a sound (ianua, iam pateas uni mihi, uicta querellis, | neu furtim uerso cardine aperta sones, 1.2.9-10). A brawl once inside looks to be the last thing on his mind. Compare also the references to cowardice and fear in relation to the night-time activities of the lover in 1.2.23-4 (nec docet [sc. Venus] hoc omnes sed quos nec inertia tardat | nec uetat obscura surgere nocte timor ) and, as he commits himself to the protection of Venus, to the dangers he imagines himself facing in his nocturnal wanderings in 1.2.25-30 (en ego cum tenebris tota uagor anxius urbe | … | nec sinit occurrat quisquam qui corpora ferro | uulnera aut rapta praemia ueste petat. | quisquis amore tenetur eat tutusque sacerque | qualibet; insidias non timuisse decet ). In the dark, even the sound of footsteps and the prospect of recognition by those he meets fill him with fear in 1.2.35-8 (parcite luminibus, seu uir seu femina fiat | obuia; celari uult sua furta Venus. | ne strepitu terrete pedum neu quaerite nomen | neu prope fulgenti lumina ferte face). Delia remains an unseen presence in this poem, mediated (as in 1.1) only by the lover's words. Note also the language of overcoming fear he juxtaposes with her name when he apostrophizes her and encourages her to give her guards the slip in 1.2.15-16: tu quoque, ne timide, Delia, falle; | audendum est: fortes adiuuat ipsa Venus.
9 Lee (n. 5), 5.
10 The use of the possessive pronoun with the beloved's name is a characteristic of love elegy in general (cf. Ov. Am. 1.15.30 sua cum Gallo nota Lycoris erit, with McKeown's note ad loc.), but seems peculiarly appropriate to the topos of iuncta nomina: cf. Prop. 2.34.86, Varro Leucadiae maxima flamma suae; Ov. Tr. 2.427-8, sic sua lasciuo cantata est saepe Catullo | femina, cui falsum Lesbia nomen erat.
11 Looking back to the first appearance of the name Delia in Verg. Ecl. 3.67, might one perhaps see a humorous contrast there between Δειλία and the associations of the name of Menalcas with μένος, ‘might’ or ‘force’, or μένω, ‘stand fast’, and ἀλκή, ‘strength’?
12 I am grateful to CQ’s anonymous referee for the suggestion to develop this point.
13 See Watson, L.C., A Commentary on Horace's Epodes (Oxford, 2003), ad locGoogle Scholar.
14 See especially Cairns, F., Tibullus: A Hellenistic Poet at Rome (Cambridge, 1979), 87–110 Google Scholar; id., ‘Ancient “etymology” and Tibullus: on the classification of “etymologies” and on “etymological markers”’, PCPhS 42 (1996), 24–59 Google Scholar; Maltby, R., A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (Leeds, 1991)Google Scholar. Maltby's commentary on Tibullus (n. 1) draws attention to possible etymologies as they occur in the text. The bibliography is now extensive, but in this context cf. especially Hinds, S., ‘Venus, Varro and the vates: towards the limits of etymologizing interpretation’, Dictynna 3 (2006)Google Scholar, online at http://dictynna.revues.org/206 (accessed 28 May 2015). Hinds explores in detail the ancient etymologies for the name Venus discussed below with important general comments on Latin poetic etymologizing.
15 Cairns (n. 14 [1979]), 94–5.
16 Sedley, D., Plato's Cratylus (Cambridge, 2003), 97Google Scholar and 98.
17 The imagery of the δεσμοί of love is found in Meleager, Anth. Pal. 12.132.3-4, τί μάτην ἐνὶ δεσμοῖς | σπαίρεις; αὐτὸς Ἔρως τὰ πτερά σοι δέδεκεν, in an epigram addressed to his soul (cf. 1, οὔ σοι ταῦτ’ ἐβόων, ψυχή;).
18 Cf. Ov. Am. 1.6.1, ianitor (indignum) dura religate catena with McKeown's note ad loc.
19 Cairns (n. 14 [1979]), 96 suggests a possible etymological play on ten ero and continuisse in 1.1.46.
