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Lygdamus (probably a pseudonym)"Both names are almost certainly pseudonyms." Navarro Antolín (1996), p. 21. was a Roman people 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).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. This line, however, is identical to one in Ovid's Tristia from AD 11,Ovid, Tristia 4.10.6. 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.Patricia Anne Watson, "Lygdamus", The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2012). Some more recent scholars, however, have argued that Lygdamus lived much later than Ovid and imitated his style.This last group includes Lee (1958), Navarro Antolín (1996), and Maltby (2021). No other author mentions Lygdamus, making the mystery of his real identity all the more difficult.Navarro Antolín (1996), p. 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.
The name "Neaera" is common in Greek mythology and is also thought to be a pseudonym. It first occurs in Homer's Odyssey 12.111, and it is also found in Virgil's Eclogue 3.3, Horace's Epodes 15.11 and Odes 3.14.21, and Ovid's Amores 3.6.
Neaera is a very different kind of woman from Tibullus's Delia and Nemesis. The latter two are apparently courtesans, who keep their lovers waiting outside the door while they entertain other lovers inside. Both girls, especially Nemesis, demand expensive gifts.
Neaera is clearly not a courtesan. She comes from a cultured family (4.92) and the author knows her "very kind" mother and "most amiable" father (4.93–94). The author considers her to be his wife (2.30) and her mother to be his mother-in-law (2.14). The author prays not only to Venus but also to Juno, the goddess of marriage, to help him (3.33–34); similarly Neaera swears by both goddesses that she loves him (6.48).Navarro Antolín, p. 22. She appears to have left him and he prays for her return (3.27). The awful news he hears in a dream from Apollo is that she is planning to marry someone else (4.58, 4.80). The opening couplet of poem 2 indicates that the two loved each other, but a third person caused them to separate. In the last poem the poet chides Neaera for her perjury (6.47–50) and her unfaithfulness (55) but declares that, though he is now over his passion for her, he wishes her well (6.29–30) and she is still dear to him (56).
Though it is possible to take the view that the author was originally married to Neaera, other possibilities exist and have been adopted by various scholars.Navarro Antolín, pp. 22–24. One view is that they were merely lovers but that the author wished Neaera to eventually become his wife. Another hypothesis is that they were betrothed, but that Neaera broke off the engagement.
Thus the 4th poem, as well as being the longest, is the centre of the series.
Gruppe (1839), however, was the first to suggest that Lygdamus was a pseudonym for Ovid himself. This idea was taken up by Radford (1926) and others, who noted in detail the large number of words and phrases which are common to Lygdamus and Ovid but not found or rarely found in other authors.Radford, R. S. (1926). "The Ovidian Authorship of the Lygdamus Elegies". In Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association (Vol. 57, pp. 149–180). (A shorter revised version is in: Radford, R. S. (1927). "The Ovidian Authorship of the Lygdamus Elegies". Classical Philology, 22(4), 356-371.)Baligan, G. & Paratore, E. (1950). "Ancora su Ligdamo". Aevum, 24 (Fasc. 3), 270–299; p. 282. There are also features of style which are typical of Ovid but not of other poets; such as lines of the form "adjective, -que, noun, adjective, -que, noun", as in Castaliamque umbram Pieriosque lacus "the Castalian Spring shade and the Pierian lakes",Lyg. 1.16; cf. 3.16, 5.24. or the placing of a monosyllable + -que (e.g. inque, isque) at the beginning of a pentameter. Another argument supporting this view is that the circumstances described in the poems seem to fit Ovid's biographical details very well, as described in his autobiographical poem Tristia 4.10 (he was born in 43 BC; the poet seems fairly wealthy; Neaera is described as his wife, whose parents he knows; Ovid states that his marriage to his second wife lasted only a short time before she married another man). The reasons for Ovid writing anonymously are plausibly explained by Radford by the fact that his father wished him to follow a career in politics and apparently repeatedly discouraged him from writing poetry. Tristia 4.10.21–2.
If the poems were written by Ovid, according to Radford, since they contain echoes of Horace's Odes and Ars Poetica as well as various parts of Virgil's Aeneid, it would seem that they date from 19 BC or 18 BC, when Ovid was about 24 or 25 years old. Radford (1926), p. 155–6.
Despite these arguments, some more recent scholars have argued that Lygdamus was not Ovid, but someone who imitated him. A. G. Lee (1958) argued that in several places where similar phrases occur in both Lygdamus and Ovid, in each case the phrase is more appropriate in the Ovidian context. He also noted certain items of vocabulary which are generally not found in the time of Tibullus, such as the adjective Erythraeus referring to the Indian Ocean. On this basis he conjectured that the date of Lygdamus may have been in the late 1st century AD.Lee, A. G. (1958, January). "The Date of Lygdamus, and his Relationship to Ovid". In Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (No. 5 (185), pp. 15–22). Navarro Antolín (1996) and Maltby (2021) take a similar view.
A third possibility, that Lygdamus was an earlier poet who was imitated by Ovid, though held by some scholars,Somerville, T. (2020), "The Problem of Lygdamus and Ovid Reconsidered", Hermes 148(2): 173–197. is thought to be less probable. Peter White (2002) writes: "the coincidences between (Ovid and Lygdamus) make it much likelier that Lygdamus is either the youthful Ovid or a later writer impersonating the young Ovid."Peter White in: Boyd, B. W. (Ed.). (2002). Brill's Companion to Ovid; page 7.
Metrically, the poems can be divided into two groups. Poems 1, 2, 3, and 6 are more dactylic: in these the proportion of dactylic feet (not counting the ending of each line, which doesn't vary) is 45%,Though 45% is a high proportion, it is not as high as in Ovid's mature work, the Ars Amatoria, where it reaches 57%. See: Radford, R. S. (1920). "The Juvenile Works of Ovid and the Spondaic Period of His Metrical Art". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 51 (1920), pp. 146–171; page 151. whereas in poems 4 and 5 it is only 37%.Radford, Robert S. (1920). "The Juvenile Works of Ovid and the Spondaic Period of His Metrical Art". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 51, pp. 146–171; see p. 163.Cartault, A. (1911). Le distique élégiaque chez Tibulle, Sulpicia, Lygdamus. Journal des Savants, 9(2), 85–86; page 7. The reason for this is not known, unless it might be the rather sombre subject matter of these poems.Radford, Robert S. (1920). "The Juvenile Works of Ovid and the Spondaic Period of His Metrical Art". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 51, pp. 146–171; see p. 165.
Detailed metrical studies have shown that the Lygdamus poems were clearly written by a different poet than those of Tibullus. One of the more obvious differences is that in Lygdamus the caesura of the hexameter is almost always a masculine caesura in the 3rd foot, whereas in Tibullus it varies between the 3rd foot and the 4th.Cartault, A. (1911). Le distique élégiaque chez Tibulle, Sulpicia, Lygdamus. Journal des Savants, 9(2), 85–86; pages 312–313.
Similarly in poem 2, the words dolor (dolorem), erepta (eripuit), coniuge in the first four lines are repeated as dolor, ereptae, coniugis in the last four;Navarro Antolín (1996), pp. 188–9. while candida, ossa, nigra in line 10 are repeated in lines 17–18.
In poems 3, 4, and 5 chiastic verbal and thematic echoes are found mostly at the beginning and ends of the poems.Navarro Antolín (1996), pp. 411, 452. The structure of poem 4 as a whole is chiastic (the poet's reaction to the dream, the dream itself, the poet's reaction to the dream).Navarro Antolín (1996), pp. 258–9. Within the dream section lines 63–76 form a chiastic structure of their own, with the myth of Apollo and Admetus at the centre.Navarro Antolín (1996), p. 364.
In poem 6 has chiastic echoes more widely spread, for example quid precor a demens? in 27 vs. quid queror infelix? in 37; and the myth of Agave in 24 vs. the myth of Ariadne in 39, clearly marking 29–37 as the centre of the poem.
Maltby notes that verbal echoes are also used to link poems together. For example, caram 'dear' and coniunx 'wife' in the last four lines of poem 1 are found again as caram and coniuge in the first four lines of poem 2.Maltby (2021), poem 2, introduction.
Poem 5 has clear verbal echoes of Tibullus 1.3, in which Tibullus, like Lygdamus, is ill and imagines he may die.Navarro Antolín (1996), p. 414.
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