La campagna di Nemesi (Tibullo 2,3,61 ss.)

The paper discusses the textual readings in Tib. 2,3,61, supporting at tibi dura Ceres Nemesin quae abducis ab urbe: at the same time it offers an outline of the elegy where Lucretius appears – near Vergil – as major influence. Contrasting to the 1st book, the countryside is no longer presented as an ideal place of happiness, but as a place of hard and onerous work, that recalls the hard way of life of early men at the end of the 5th book of de rerum natura. The couple of epithets durus (v. 61) and tener (v. 63), applied to Ceres and Bacchus respectively, give further evidence.