Lygdamus

Lygdamus 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". This line, however, is identical to one in Ovid's Tristia from AD 11, 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. Some more recent scholars, however, have argued that Lygdamus lived much later than Ovid and imitated his style. No other author mentions Lygdamus, making the mystery of his real identity all the more difficult.