Editing Tibullus (section)

=== The Marathus cycle ===
In addition, three elegies in Book I (1.4, 1.8, and 1.9) concern themselves with Tibullus's love for a boy, who is named Marathus.<ref name=Drinkwater>Drinkwater, M. O. (2012). [https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5184/classicalj.107.4.0423 "His turn to cry: Tibullus' Marathus cycle (1.4, 1.8 and 1.9) and Roman elegy"]. ''The Classical Journal'', 107(4), 423–449.</ref> The three poems constitute the longest poetic project in Roman literature having homosexual love as theme.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Beyond Sex: The Poetics and Politics of Pederasty in Tibullus 1.4|year=2007|pages=55–82|author=Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos|volume=61|issue=1/2|journal=Classical Association of Canada}}</ref> The first of these poems, 1.4, begins with an imprecation of the poet to the god [[Priapus]], asking for advice on how to win over beautiful boys. The god advises patience and that the man in love yield to the beloved boy's every whim and perform a series of services if the boy demands it (1.4.15–53). At first the narrator of the poem presents himself as someone who is simply asking for advice from the god on behalf of a friend Titius who has fallen in love with a boy but whose wife forbids such affairs (1.4.73). He later portrays himself as a teacher in the affairs of love, declaring that the doors of his house are open for other men in love with boys to ask his advice (1.4.78). In the last four lines, however, he confesses to loving a boy named Marathus, who tortures him with "love's delay" (1.4.81) and whom the narrator cannot conquer with his arts, causing other men to laugh at his lessons (1.4.83).

The cycle is resumed in poem 1.8, in which the narrator learns that Marathus is in love with a girl. The narrator advises the girl to treat Marathus with more leniency than Marathus treated the narrator himself (1.8.49). The narrator accompanies Marathus to the girl's house, carrying a torch to light the path at night, bribes her so that she meets Marathus, and talks the boy up to the girl (this is described in more detail the next poem, 1.9, lines 41–44). This poem can be seen as part of the narrator's efforts to win Marathus' goodwill by performing a series of humiliating tasks for him, exceeding the god's counsel to perform hard physical labors for the lad, by also helping him carry on an affair with someone else.<ref name=Drinkwater />

In the poem that ends the cycle, 1.9, Marathus is not named, but it is usually assumed that it is about the same boy. In this poem the narrator reveals that Marathus is in a relationship with a much older married man who buys the young man's affections through expensive gifts. Initially, the narrator asks the gods for compassion towards Marathus (1.9.5–6), who betrayed a promise he had made to the narrator, but soon love yields to bitterness, and he begins to express the desire that the gifts of the rival lover turn to ashes (1.9.11–12) and that the same happen to the poems that the narrator wrote to Marathus to win him over (1.9.48–49), of which he is now ashamed. He turns to the rival, taking revenge on him for having stolen his boyfriend by taunting him with the affair that the rival's wife is herself having with another young man (1.9.54–58 and 65–74). Finally, the poet addresses the boy himself, telling him that he will cry when he sees the poet fall in love with another capricious lad (1.9.79–80), but declaring himself, for the time being, finally released from unfaithful love.