Editing Tibullus (section)

===Lygdamus elegies===
{{main|Lygdamus}}
The third book opens with a set of six poems in elegiac couplets (290 verses) by a poet who calls himself "[[Lygdamus]]", all but the fifth celebrating his love for a woman called Neaera, whom he describes as "unfaithful, but all the same beloved" (3.6.56). In one line (3.5.18) he gives his own birthdate as the equivalent of 43 BC, using the same words as Ovid used in ''[[Tristia]]'' 4.10.6 to describe his own birthdate ("the year when both consuls fell by equal fate"). There are a number of other similarities between Lygdamus and Ovid, which are examined in an article by A. G. Lee.<ref>Lee, A. G. (1958). [https://www.jstor.org/stable/44712408 "The Date of Lygdamus, and his Relationship to Ovid"]. In ''Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society'' (No. 5 (185), pp. 15–22).</ref> Lee comes to the conclusion that Lygdamus must have copied Ovid, not the reverse, and that his date may have been in the late 1st century AD. F. Navarro Antolín comes to the same conclusion, citing among other reasons certain words that were not generally used in poetry of the time of Tibullus.<ref>Navarro Antolín, F. (translated by Zoltowski, J. J.) (1996). [https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/2599 ''Lygdamus (Corpus Tibullianum III.1-6 Lygdami Elegiarum Liber)'']. ''Mnemosyne'', Supplements, Volume 154. Brill; p. 19.</ref>

Other scholars, however, noting the great overlap in vocabulary and stylistic features between Lygdamus and Ovid, have argued that the Lygdamus poems were written anonymously by the youthful Ovid himself.<ref>Radford, R. S. (1926). [https://www.jstor.org/stable/282770 "The Ovidian Authorship of the Lygdamus Elegies"]. In ''Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association'' (Vol. 57, pp. 149–180).</ref><ref>Baligan, G. & Paratore, E. (1950). [http://www.jstor.com/stable/25820127 "{{lang|it|Ancora su Ligdamo}}"]. ''Aevum'', 24 (Fasc. 3), 270–299; p. 282.</ref>

Unlike Tibullus's Delia and Nemesis, or Propertius's Cynthia, Lygdamus's Neaera appears not to have been a prostitute but is described as Lygdamus's "wife" ({{lang|la|coniunx}}) with respectable parents whom the poet knows. Radford and others take this as representing the situation of Ovid himself, whose second wife apparently divorced him.<ref>''Tristia 4.10.21–2; cf. Radford (1926), p. 150.</ref>

According to one theory, the six poems of Lygdamus were originally added by booksellers to book 2, to make up the very short length of that book, and only later transferred to book 3. This would have made book 1 and 2 of almost equal length (820 lines + 718 lines).<ref>Navarro Antolín, F. (translated by Zoltowski, J. J.) (1996). [https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/2599 ''Lygdamus (Corpus Tibullianum III.1-6 Lygdami Elegiarum Liber)'']. ''Mnemosyne'', Supplements, Volume 154. Brill; pages 27–28.</ref>