Sulpicia 14 [Appendix Tibulliana 3.14]

I want to spend my birthday in the city with Cerinthus, but Messalla wants me to spend my birthday in the country. 

1  nātālis: in the past scholars have (perhaps unfairly) seen Sulpicia’s interest in her own birthday as a sign of her youth and feminine frivolity, since most Roman poets did not write about their own birthdays. But Martial wrote about his own birthday in Epigram 12.60. 

2  Cerinthō: Cerinthus is the name given to Sulpicia’s lover—a pseudonym, as was common in elegy. 

2  trīstis: render as adverbial. 

2  agendus erit: passive periphrastic with a future tense verb—“will necessarily be spent.”  

3  urbe: abl. of comparison with dulcius.

3  puellae: dative with apta.

4  Arretīnō < Arretīnus, a, um, “of Arretium, Arretine.” Arretium (mod. Arezzo, in Tuscany) was in Etruria; inscriptions attest a connection with the Sulpicii.

4  agrō: like Arretīnō likely dative with an implied adjective like aptus to keep parallel structure with the previous line. 

5  Messalla: i.e. M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus (64 BCE – 8 or 12 CE), a prominent Republican leader also associated with the Augustan regime. He was Sulpicia’s uncle, and a patron of Tibullus and other poets.

5  meī: objective genitive of the pronoun, with studiōsē.

6  tempestīvae: “timely, suitable, opportune,” LS tempestivus I. The implication is that this is not a good time for her to take a trip to the country. Synonymous with opportunae. 

8   arbitriō meō: lit. “in my own judgement.” If you translate esse as if it were utī it helps to get at the sense of the Latin, “to use my own judgement.” 

The sense here is that Sulpicia is not allowed to have an opinion (arbitrio), but she does anyhow (Fulkerson). 

8  quamvīs nōn sinis: quamvīs can take the indicative. LS quamvis II.β.