The third book, which contains 290 verses, is by a much inferior hand. The writer calls himself Lygdamus and the fair that he sings of Neaera. He was born in the same year as Ovid, but there is nothing Ovidian about his work. He has a good many reminis cences and imitations of Tibullus and Propertius ; and they are not always happy. The separation of the fourth book from the third has no ancient authority. It dates from the revival of letters, and is due to the Italian scholars of the 15th century. The fourth book consists of poems of very different quality. The first is a composition in 211 hexameters on the achievements of Messalla, and is very poor. The author was certainly not Tibullus.
The value of the short Vita Tibulli, found at the end of the Ambrosian, Vatican and inferior mss., has been much discussed. There is little in it that we could not at once infer from Tibullus himself and from what Horace says about Albius, though it is possible that its compiler may have taken some of his state ments from Suetonius's book De poetis. It is another moot ques tion of some importance whether our poet should be identified with the Albius of Horace (Od i. 33 ; Epist. i. 4), as is done by the Horatian commentator Porphyrio (A.D. 200-250) in his Scholia. Porphyrio's view has been examined by Postgate (Selections from Tibullus, appendix A). If it is rejected the authority of the Life is considerably impaired. Delia's name (from oiPtos) is a trans lation of Plania. As regards her station, it should be noticed that she was not entitled to wear the stola, the dress of Roman matrons (i. 6, 68). Her husband is mentioned as absent (i. 2, 67 seq.). Lygdamus is probably the real name of the author of the first six elegies in book iii., but little further is known about him. His elegies and the other poems in the third book ("third" and "fourth" books) appear to have been known to Ovid. There are agreements much too close to be accidental. Most scholars since Lachmann have condemned the "Panegyric on Messalla." It is an inflated and at the same time tasteless declamation, entirely devoid of poetical merit. The language is often absurdly exagger ated, e.g., 190 seq. The author himself seems to be conscious of his own deficiencies (1 seq., 177 seq.). Like so many of his con temporaries, he had been reduced to poverty by the loss of his estates (181 seq.). Sulpicia was the daughter of Servius Sulpicius (iii. 16; iv. in, 4), and she seems to have been under the tutelage
of Messalla, her uncle by marriage (Haupt, Opuscu/a, iii. 502).
MANUSCRIPTS.-The two best mss. of Tibullus are the Ambrosianus (A), of date about and the Vaticanus (V), of the 15th century. Besides these we have a number of extracts from Tibullus in Florilegium Parisinum, an anthology from various Latin writers which probably goes back to the nth century, and the Excerpta frisingensia, preserved in an ms. now at Munich, unfor tunately very few in number. Also excerpts from the lost Fragmentum cuiacianum, made by Scaliger, and now in the library at Leyden. It only contained the part from iii. 4, 65 to the end. The Codex cuiacianus, a late ms. containing Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius, is still extant.