SOURCE: "On [Tibullus] III, 19 (IV, 13)," in Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, No. 189, 1963, pp. 4-10.

In the following essay, Lee explains why he considers Tibullus 1II, 19 to be the work of a skillful forger.

In considering whether or not this poem is genuine Tibullus we have only internal evidence to go on. Internal evidence is often not conclusive enough. It is difficult to assess, and the assessment usually involves a subjective element. The ideal is to reduce this subjective element to a minimum, to appeal to logic in the way a textual critic does when he chooses one MS reading rather than another or decides to admit an emendation of the text. The textual critic's choice of reading or the truth of his emendation cannot be proved in the way a mathematical theorem can be proved, but none the less we can know that the critic is right...