Lygdamus

Not to be confused with Lygdamis (disambiguation).
For the butterfly, see Glaucopsyche lygdamus.

Lygdamus (probably a pseudonym)[1] was a Roman poet who wrote six love poems in Classical Latin. His elegies, five of them concerning a girl named Neaera, are preserved in the Appendix Tibulliana alongside the apocryphal works of Tibullus. In poem 5, line 6, he describes himself as young and in 5.18 gives his birth year as the year "when both consuls died by equal fate" (that is, 43 BC).[2] This line, however, is identical to one in Ovid's Tristia from AD 11,[3] and it has been much debated by scholars. One suggestion, supported by the numerous features of vocabulary and style shared between Lygdamus and Ovid, is that "Lygdamus" is merely a pen name used by the young Ovid.[4] Some more recent scholars, however, have argued that Lygdamus lived much later than Ovid and imitated his style.[5] No other author mentions Lygdamus, making the mystery of his real identity all the more difficult.[6]

Unlike Tibullus's Delia and Nemesis, Neaera appears not to have been a courtesan, but is described by the poet as his wife, who left him for another man.

  1. ^ "Both names are almost certainly pseudonyms." Navarro Antolín (1996), p. 21.
  2. ^ The consuls were Pansa and Hirtius who died at the Battle of Mutina in northern Italy. The phrase might also refer to 69 AD or even 83 BC: Navarro Antolín (1996), pp. 4–5; 7; 17.
  3. ^ Ovid, Tristia 4.10.6.
  4. ^ Patricia Anne Watson, "Lygdamus", The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2012).
  5. ^ This last group includes Lee (1958), Navarro Antolín (1996), and Maltby (2021).
  6. ^ Navarro Antolín (1996), p. 6.