Sulpicia the Elder

Sulpicia the Elder, daughter of Servius Sulpicius Rufus , niece of Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus , was a Roman poet at the time of Emperor Augustus . She was evidently in close contact with the group of poets around her uncle Messalla, to which Tibullus and Ovid also belonged.

Along with the elegies of Tibullus, six shorter, epigram-like poems by Sulpicias are preserved in elegiac distiches (Corpus Tibullianum III 13-18), in which she tells of her love for a certain Cerinthus, who may have been with Cornutus, a friend of Tibullus (Tibullus II 2 and 3), is identical. The longest poem is only ten lines long, the shortest just one sentence. The language of the verses sounds colloquial and a bit clumsy in places, giving the impression that a young girl who is inexperienced in poetry is expressing her feelings directly. However, this corresponds entirely to the tradition of Roman epigrams, as can already be seen in Catullus , so that the artless spontaneity of the Sulpicia poems could in truth represent a careful poetic stylization.

Also noteworthy are the elegies that preceded the Sulpicia poems in the collection of the Corpus Tibullianum (III 8-12), which describe their relationship to Cerinthus from the perspective of a third party and thus form an introduction to their poems. In research it was therefore occasionally assumed that Sulpicia's poems did not come from herself, but from this unknown poet, who poetically presents the same subject from different perspectives. However, there is no proof of this thesis.

Editions and translations

Tibulli aliorumque carminum libri tres , ed. by John Percival Postgate . 2nd Edition. Oxford 1915.
Johann Ferdinand Koreff (translator): The Sulpicia elegies and some elegiac fragments of others. Paris 1810

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Sulpicia the Elder
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Roman poet
DATE OF BIRTH	1st century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH	1st century BC BC or 1st century