Book excerpt: This is the first full and detailed commentary on the second book of Tibullus' elegies since K.F. Smith's edition of 1913. It takes into account every significant advance in scholarship since then on Tibullus, elegy in general. The book provides an authoritative Latin text, based on the definitive Oxford Classical Text, an Introduction covering such topics as the chronology of Book II, its completeness and construction, and the main characters of the poems; and a comprehensive Commentary discussing all aspects of linguistic and literary interest in the poems: the problems of reference and the interpretation for instance, as well as notes on diction, style, themes, and metre. There are also introductory essays on each poem, discussing the background situation, genre, and main models. A critical appendix looks at all the textual points that substantially affect the understanding and appreciation of the elegies, a structural appendix explores the structure of the individual poems, and there are full indices.