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On the subject of tears Virgil shares the attitude of the intellectuals, who criticize the exasperated and public manifestations of pain, but on the other hand he gives dignity to the suffering of his characters. In the Aeneid, in which this topic finds a great space, crying is the expression of the impotence of men and gods in front of the inexorable fulfillment of Fate, and above all Aeneas appears divided between the need to remain insensitive to tears and the desire to express his human feelings.

Amor, a key-word in the last Virgilian eclogue, dedicated to the unhappy love of Gallus for Lycoris, has in the text a great importance, which deserves a careful analysis. The meaning of the term relates to the passion of Gallus for his beloved, but also to his choice of military life, and to the affection of friendship. Particularly interesting are the four occurrences of the word in the plural, perhaps alluding to the title of Gallus’ elegies and always referred to the complex metapoetic discourse developed in the eclogue.

The Roman triumph is treated by the Augustan poets from a literary and political perspective. Ovid in particular gives it original and ambiguous features. The topic is often presented as the prediction of a triumph, a point of view perhaps inherited from Gallus. Propertius innovates from the Gallan original, and Ovid uses Propertius’ treatment for further innovations. In his exile poetry, Ovid makes further substantial changes to the use of the triumph, which raises pointed questions as to the poet's sincerity in his apparent praise of Augustus and Tiberius.

Prop. 1, 20 has many unusual features in theme, in style, and narrative of the myth, which can be traced back to the imitation of Gallus’ poetry. The comparison with Virgilian passages linked to the first Latin elegist seems to confirm this reconstruction: so Prop. 1, 20 not only could give an idea of the style and features of Gallus’ elegiac (and perhaps hexametric) production, but could also reflect an important phase of transition in the development of the new Latin erotic elegy.

The two couplets of Prop. 2.34.91-92 and Ov. amor. 3.9.63-64 can be read as important testimonies in the complex debate on the Virgilian laudes Galli, at the end of the Georgics. Both are related to the death of Gallus and throw light on the reactions of the contem­poraries to the suicide of the elegist and the emotional context of the moment. On this basis even the alleged elimination of the laudes Galli by Virgil can be explained in a new perspective.

The lament of Juturna at the end of the Aeneid (12,869-886) shows the features of a real funeral complaint, both in form and in the concepts it expresses. Virgil, however, is masterfully able to adapt the τόποι of this genre to the anomalous situation of his character, a goddess forced to regret her own immortality.

In the bucolic production of Theocritus the balance between idealization and realism in the representation of pastoral life is obtained with a learned alternation between pieces of refined poetry and scenes of vulgar obscenity or trivial naivety. When Virgil introduces the bucolic genre in Latin poetry, in accordance with the taste of his time, reluctant to the concreteness of Hellenistic and neoteric poets, avoids reproducing the most crude and realistic aspects of Theocritean poetry, or softens them in spirit and language.

In his epicedion on the death of Tibullus, Amor. 3.9, Ovid engages in a dialogue not only with the obvious model of Tibullan poetry, but also with Propertius. He chooses Prop. 2.13b, which contains a foreshadowing of Propertius' death and burial in the broadest terms. In this way Ovid reflects on important themes like death, burial, the underworld and literary glory, assuming a different point of view from those of his elegiac predecessors. Of great importance in this poetic dialogue is the figure of Venus, whom Ovid presents in a very different way from Tibullus and Propertius. In this perspective Amor. 3.9 amounts to a reconsideration by Ovid of pivotal topics in the tradition of Latin love elegy.