Lygdamus was a

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

poet who wrote in

Classical Latin Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a literary standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It was used from 75 BC to the 3rd century AD, when it developed into Late Latin. In some later pe ...

. Six of his

elegies An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...

, addressed to a girl named Neaera, are preserved in the ''Appendix Tibulliana'' alongside the apocryphal works of

Tibullus Albius Tibullus ( BC19 BC) was a Latin poet and writer of elegies. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to him are of questionable origins. Little is known about the life of Tibullus. There are only a f ...

. He belonged to the literary circle around

Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus (64 BC – AD 8 or c. 12) was a Roman general, author, and patron of literature and art. Family Corvinus was the son of the consul in 61 BC, Marcus Valerius Messalla Niger,Syme, R., ''Augustan Aristocracy'' ...

. In poem 5, he describes himself as young and gives his birth year as 43 BC. This line, however, is nearly identical to one in

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the ...

's ''

Tristia The ''Tristia'' ("Sorrows" or "Lamentations") is a collection of letters written in elegiac couplets by the Augustan poet Ovid during his exile from Rome. Despite five books of his copious bewailing of his fate, the immediate cause of Augustus ...

'' from AD 11, which indicates that either Lygdamus is lying about his age or else Ovid was imitating him. It has even been suggested "Lygdamus" is merely a

pen name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

used by the young Ovid.Patricia Anne Watson
"Lygdamus"
''The Oxford Classical Dictionary'', 4th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Editions

*Navarro Antolín, Fernando, ed. ''Lygdamus: Corpus Tibullianum III.1–6: Lygdami Elegiarum Liber''. Leiden: Brill, 1996.

References

{{reflist 43 BC births Golden Age Latin writers 1st-century BC Roman poets 1st-century Roman poets Elegiac poets