Talk:Lygdamus

Messalla's circle
"There is no evidence at all that he belonged to Messalla's circle, indeed could not have done if he lived after Ovid."

Well, yes. But the article does not state only that he lived in the late 1st century. It also presents the possibilities that he was older than Ovid and that he was Ovid. This is not an outdated view. Ted Somerville (2020), "The Problem of Lygdamus and Ovid Reconsidered", Hermes 148(2): 173–197, for example, writes that other scholars go on writing as if the Appendix Tibulliana (containing the poems of Lygdamus) is what it so obviously appears to be: a collection of poets in the circle of Messalla. He agrees, concluding that Ovid imitated Lygdamus. Srnec (talk) 16:13, 20 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Well that looks a very interesting article, but it doesn't appear to be available on JSTOR or in the Wikipedia library. I'll see if I can get hold of it in some other way. Perhaps it is correct. On the other hand some doubt remains, in view of the fact that Lygdamus nowhere mentions Messalla (unlike all the other writers in the Tibullan corpus). Moreover Ovid doesn't name Lygdamus among his list of recent poets, which he might be expected to have done if they belonged to the same circle and if Ovid imitated him. What about the theory (mentioned in Navarro Antolín pp. 27–28) that Lygdamus's poems were added to Tibullus's by a bookseller to make up the second book to a normal length and were originally part of book 2? If so, what they have in common with Tibullus's poems is not that they arose from the circle of Messalla, but that they are love elegies on similar themes to those of Tibullus. Kanjuzi (talk) 18:24, 20 July 2023 (UTC)


 * The Somerville article is apparently unavailable at present, since it is behind a four-year moving wall. However, it does seem inherently improbable that Ovid should have been heavily influenced by Lygdamus but never mention him. Kanjuzi (talk) 17:40, 24 July 2023 (UTC)