(13-14)
At the opposite extreme is the final poem of the book, a defence of Ovid's poetry; as this was a traditional poetic subject, the level of diction throughout the poem is extremely high, particularly in the catalogue of poets that forms the main body of the poem.
An interesting result of the mixture of styles is the presence in the poems of exile of words and expressions which belong essentially to prose, being otherwise rarely or never found in verse. Some instances from Ex Ponto IV are ad summam (i 15), conuictor (iii 15), abunde (viii 37), ex toto (viii 72), di faciant (ix 3), secreto (ix 31), respectu (ix 100), quominus (xii 1), praefrigidus (xii 35), and tantummodo (xvi 49).
Both in subject and style the sixteen poems of Ex Ponto IV show a wide variety, worthy of the creator of the Metamorphoses. The following section examines the special characteristics of each of the poems.
Sextus Pompeius is the recipient of poems i, iv, v, and xv; only Cotta Maximus and Ovid's wife have more letters from exile addressed to them. It is clear from the opening of IV i that Pompeius had himself prohibited Ovid from addressing him; and Ovid is careful to present himself as a client rather than a friend; the tone is of almost abject humility, and he shows circumspection in his requests for assistance.
In the opening of the first poem, Ovid describes how difficult it had been to prevent himself from naming Pompeius in his verse; in the climactic ten lines he declares that he is entirely Pompeius' creation. Only in the transition between the topics does he refer to future help from Pompeius, linking it with the assistance he is already providing:
(25-26)
The fourth poem is a description of how Fama came to Ovid and told him of Pompeius' election to the consulship; Ovid then pictures the joyous scene of the accession. At the end of the poem he indirectly asks for Pompeius' assistance, praying that at some point he may remember him in exile. The device of having Fama report Pompeius' accession to the consulship serves to emphasize the importance of the event and raise the tone of the poem. Ovid had earlier used Fama as the formal addressee of EP II i, which described his reaction to the news of Germanicus' triumph. In the fifth poem Ovid achieves a similar effect through the device of addressing the poem itself, giving it directions on where it will find Pompeius and what consular duties he might be performing[6]. Only in the concluding distich does Ovid direct the poem to ask for his assistance.
The fifteenth poem contains Ovid's most forceful appeal for Pompeius' assistance. It is interesting to observe the techniques Ovid uses to avoid offending Pompeius. The first part of the poem is a metaphorical description of how Ovid is as much Pompeius' property as his many estates or his house in Rome. This leads to Ovid's request:
(21-24)
He then attempts to compensate for the boldness of his request. First he says that his appeal is unnecessary:
(27-38)
Then he apologizes for making such constant requests:
(29-30)
He ends the poem with a return to the topic of the benefits Pompeius has already rendered him.
No poem in the fourth book of the Ex Ponto is addressed to a member of the imperial family, but the greater part of IV viii, nominally addressed to Suillius, is in fact directed to his patron Germanicus. Suillius' family ties with Ovid and his influential position would have made it natural for Ovid to address him in the earlier books of the Ex Ponto or even in the Tristia; and it is clear from the opening of the poem that Suillius must have distanced himself from Ovid:
In the section that follows, Ovid asks for Suillius' assistance, rather strangely setting forth his own impeccable family background and moral purity; then he moves to the topic of Suillius' piety towards Germanicus, and in line 31 begins to address Germanicus with a direct request for his assistance. In the fifty-eight lines that follow he develops the argument that Germanicus should accept the verse Ovid offers him for two reasons: poetry grants immortality to the subjects it describes; and Germanicus is himself a poet. In this passage Ovid allows himself a very high level of diction; as the topic was congenial to him, the result is perhaps the finest extended passage of verse in the book[7].
Ovid ends his address to Germanicus by asking for his assistance; only in the final distich of the poem does he return to Suillius.
Only two of the ten addressees named by Ovid in EP IV were recipients of earlier letters from him. Brutus, to whom IV vi is addressed, was also the addressee of EP I i and III ix, while Graecinus, to whom IV ix is addressed, was the recipient of EP I vi and II vi.
There is some difference between Ovid's treatment of Brutus and Graecinus in EP IV and in the earlier poems. EP IV vi is highly personal, being mostly devoted to a lengthy description of Brutus' apparently conflicting but in fact complementary qualities of tenacity as a prosecuting advocate and of kindness towards those in need; no poem in the fourth book of the Ex Ponto is more completely concerned with the addressee as a person. In contrast, nothing is said of Brutus in EP I i, where he acts as the mere recipient of the plea that he protect Ovid's poems, or in III ix, where Brutus is the reporter of another's remarks on the monotony of Ovid's subject-matter. The address to Graecinus in IV ix, on the other hand, is much less personal than in I vi and II vi. The part of EP IV ix concerned with Graecinus describes his elevation to the consulship, and was clearly written (in some haste) to celebrate the event. The earlier poems are more concerned with Graecinus as an individual: in EP I vi Ovid describes at length Graecinus' kindliness of spirit and his closeness to his exiled friend, while in II vi Ovid admits the justice of the criticism Graecinus makes of the conduct which led to his exile, but thanks him for his support and asks for its continuance.
The two letters to Tuticanus show a similar dichotomy.
Of the two poems, xii is more personal and more concerned with poetry. The first eighteen lines are a witty demonstration of the impossibility of using Tuticanus' name in elegiac verse, while the twelve verses that follow recall their poetic apprenticeship together. In the final twelve lines, referring to Tuticanus' senatorial career, Ovid asks him to help his cause in any way possible.
Poem xiv is far less personal than the earlier epistle. The only mention of Tuticanus is at the poem's beginning:
The bulk of the poem is a defense against charges raised by some of the Tomitans that he has defamed them in his verse. Ovid answers that he was complaining about the physical conditions at Tomis, not the people, to whom he owes a great debt. It is characteristic of the fourth book of the Ex Ponto that Ovid complains less of his exile than in his earlier verse from exile; this poem furnishes the most explicit demonstration that the years spent in exile and the dwindling likelihood of recall has made Ovid reach an accommodation with his new conditions of life.
The topic of the poem clearly has no relation to Tuticanus; Professor R. J. Tarrant points out to me Ovid's use of the same technique in some of the Amores, such as I ix (Militat omnis amans), and II x, to Graecinus on loving two women at once, where there is no apparent connection between the addressee and the subject of the poem. Professor E. Fantham notes that the bulk of xiv could even have been written before Ovid chose Tuticanus as its addressee.
Three other poems in the book are addressed to poets. In all of them poetry itself is a primary subject.
The second poem in the book, addressed to the epic poet Severus, opens with a contrast of the situations of the two poets. The main body of the poem is concerned with the difficulty of composing under the conditions Ovid endures at Tomis, and the comfort that he even so derives from pursuing his old calling. The poem is well constructed and the language vivid. A particularly fine example of the use Ovid makes of differing levels of diction is found at 35-38:
The emotional height of the tricolon, where Ovid describes poetic inspiration, gives way to a comparatively prosaic distich where he explains that the conditions necessary for inspiration do not exist at Tomis.
At the poem's conclusion Ovid reverts to Severus, asking that he send Ovid some recent piece of work.
In the tenth poem of the book, poetry is not the main subject; instead, Ovid describes the hardships he endures at Tomis, and then describes at length the reasons the Black Sea freezes over. Towards the end of the letter, however, he explains why he is writing a poem to Albinovanus on this seemingly irrelevant topic[8]. The language recalls the poem to Severus:
(67-70)
In the poem's concluding lines he links his own situation with the Theseid Albinovanus is engaged on: just as Theseus was faithful, so Albinovanus should be faithful to Ovid.
This letter is remarkable for its economy of structure, and indeed is so short as to seem rather perfunctory. Only twenty-two lines in length, it is a letter of consolation addressed to Gallio on the death of his wife. In the first four lines Ovid apologizes for not having written to him earlier. Ovid's exile serves as a bridge to the main topic of the poem:
(5-6)
The remainder of the poem consists of the ingenious interweaving of various commonplaces of consolation. The poem is a good illustration of the secondary importance Ovid often gives his own misfortune in the fourth book of the Ex Ponto.
The thirteenth poem, like the second letter to Tuticanus, shows Ovid's acceptance of his life in Tomis. In it he tells Carus of the favourable reception given a poem he had written in Getic on the apotheosis of Augustus. The poem's opening is of interest as showing Ovid's consciousness of verbal wit as a special characteristic of his verse. He starts the poem with a play on the meaning of Carus' name, then tells him that the opening will by itself tell him who his correspondent is. In the lines that follow he discusses the individuality of his own style and that of Carus; this serves to introduce the subject of his Getic verse.
The subordination of the topic of Ovid's exile to another subject can be clearly seen in the seventh poem of the book, addressed to Vestalis, primipilaris of a legion stationed in the area of Tomis. As in the letter to Gallio, mention of Ovid's personal misfortune is confined to one short passage near the start of the poem:
(3-4)
The descriptions that follow of wine freezing solid in the cold and of the Sarmatian herdsman driving his wagon across the frozen Danube are so picturesque that the reader's attention is drawn away from Ovid's personal situation. Ovid describes the poisoned arrows used in the region; then, in language recalling his letter to Gallio, expresses his regret that Vestalis has had personal experience of these weapons:
(13-14)
The remainder of the poem is a description of Vestalis' capture of Aegissos. The description is conventional and unfelt; Ovid seems merely to have assembled a few standard topics of military panegyric.
Poem iii, addressed to an unidentified friend who had proved faithless, is a well-crafted but not particularly original warning that Fortune is a changeable goddess, and his friend might well find find himself one day in Ovid's position. The familiar examples of Croesus, Pompey, and Marius are used; as the last and therefore most important example Ovid uses his own catastrophe. The device recalls the Ibis, where Ovid's final curse is to wish his enemy's exile to Tomis.
The concluding poem of the book is a defence of Ovid's poetry. The poem's argument is that poets generally become famous only after their death, but that Ovid gained his reputation while still alive. The greater part of the poem is a catalogue of Ovid's contemporary poets, the argument being that even in such company he was illustrious.
As elsewhere he equates his exile with death; the defence of his poetry therefore includes only the poetry that he wrote before his exile.
The manuscript authority for the text of the fourth book of the Ex Ponto is significantly poorer than for the earlier books because of the absence of A, Hamburgensis scrin. 52 F. This ninth-century manuscript has been recognized since the time of Heinsius as the most important witness for the text of the Ex Ponto; it breaks off, however, at III ii 67.
The manuscript authorities for the fourth book can be placed in three categories. The fragmentary G is from a different tradition than the other manuscripts. B and C are closely related, and offer the best witness to the main tradition. The other manuscripts I have collated are more greatly affected by contamination and interpolation; of them M and F show some independence, while no subclassification can be made of H, I, L, or T.
The fragmentum Guelferbytanum, Cod. Guelf. 13.11 Aug. 4°, generally dated to the fifth or sixth century, is the oldest manuscript witness to any of Ovid's poems. Part of the collection of the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, it was discovered by Carl Schoenemann, who published his discovery in 1829; details of his monograph will be found in the bibliography. The two pieces of parchment are a palimpsest, having been reused in the eighth century for a text of Augustine; later they were incorporated into a bookbinding. As a result of this treatment they are in extremely poor condition.
G contains all or part of ix 101-8, ix 127-33, xii 15-19, and xii 41-44. To make it perfectly clear when G is a witness to the text, I have not grouped it with other manuscripts, but have always specified it by name. If G is not mentioned in an apparatus entry, it is not extant for the text concerned.
G is written in uncial script, with no division between words but with indentation of the pentameters. Its one contribution to the establishment of the text is at ix 103, where it reads quamquam ... sit instead of the more usual quamquam ... est found in the other manuscripts. In general, the text offered by G is surprisingly poor. At ix 108 it reads fato for facto, at ix 130 it has the false and unmetrical spelling praeces, at ix 132 it has misscelite for misi caelite, at xii 17 it reads lati for dilati, and at xii 19 naia for nota. These errors demonstrate that the rest of the tradition does not descend from G.
Korn gives an accurate transcription of the fragment in the introduction to his edition; photographs of parts of the fragment can be found at Chatelain, Paléographie des classiques latins, tab. xcix, 2 and E. A. Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores, vol. IX, p. 40, no. 1377.
Monacensis latinus 384 and Mon. lat. 19476, both dated by editors to the twelfth century, are descended from a common ancestor. This is easily demonstrated by the large number of shared errors not found in other manuscripts[9]. At iv 36 B and C have intendunt for the correct intendent, at viii 6 uolo for uoco, at viii 18 perueniemus for inueniemur (-ntur,-mus), at viii 44 illa for ulla, at viii 89 cara for care, at ix 44 fingit for finget, at ix 71 quod for cum (FILT) and ut (HM), at ix 92 praestat for perstat, at ix 97 et for ut, at xiii 5 certe est for certe, and at xiv 30 culpatus for culpatis. In some of these passages B's still visible original reading has been corrected by a later hand. In other passages it is clear from the signs of correction that B originally agreed with C in distinctive readings now preserved in C alone: subito for sed et (iii 27), erat for eras (vi 9), occidit for occidis (vi 11), suspicit for suscipit (ix 90), parent for darent (xvi 31).
B and C on the whole offer a better text than any other manuscript. At iii 44 B1 and C omit the lost pentameter, where the other manuscripts offer interpolations. At iv 11 they alone give the probably correct solus for tristis, at xii 3 aut for ast, and at xvi 31 tyrannis (conjectured by Heinsius) for tyranni. At v 40 C and B2 alone have the correct mancipii ... tui for mancipium ... tuum.
Both manuscripts naturally have readings peculiar to themselves. B has about fifty unique readings. It places iii 11-12 after 13-14, omits v 37-40, and interchanges viii 49-50 and 51-52. At iv 34 B alone has erunt (for erit), conjectured by Heinsius; C omits the word. Similarly, at xi 21 B and F1 have mihi, omitted by C; the other manuscripts have tibi. B has ab at i 9 for the other manuscripts' in; ab is possibly the true reading.
Under the influence of Ehwald, modern editors have wrongly taken some of B's other readings to be correct, placing aspicerem in the text for prospicerem at ix 23, ara for ora at ix 115, and illi for illum at ix 126. At ix 73 editors print B and T's quem, which is clearly an interpolation for the awkward transmitted reading qua.
Unlike C, B has been quite heavily corrected by later hands.
C has more than one hundred readings peculiar to itself. Two of them I have accepted as correct: summo (for summum; H has mundum) at iii 32, and horas (that is, oras) at vii 1; the reading is also given by I. It is possible that C's correptior should be read at xii 13 for correptius. At xiv 38 C's sceptius is the manuscript reading closest to the correct Scepsius restored by Scaliger.
Most of C's errors are trivial, but at some points it departs widely from the usual text. It omits ix 47 and xiv 37, and interchanges the second hemistichs of iii 26 and 28; xvi 30 is inserted by a later hand, perhaps in an erasure. At viii 43 it has in uita for officio, at xiii 12 contra uiam for nouimus, at xiv 36 in for loci, and at xv 31 colloquio for uerum quid.
C also contains a greater number of purely palaeographical errors than any other manuscript: hunc for nunc (i 25), humeris for numeris (ii 30), hec for nec (ix 30), lucos for sucos (x 19), hasto for horto (xv 7), ueiiuolique for ueliuolique (xvi 21), pretia for pr(o)elia (xvi 23).
B and C sporadically offer the third declension accusative plural ending -is (ix 4 fascis C, ix 7 partis C, ix 73 rudentis B, x 17 cantantis B, xii 30 albentis B). But more usually all manuscripts, including B and C, have the accusative in -es: compare for example ii 27 partes, iii 53 purgantes, ix 35 praesentes, and ix 42 fasces. The manuscripts show a similar variation in the earlier books of the Ex Ponto. The ninth-century Hamburg manuscript (A) sometimes offers accusatives in -is where the other manuscripts, even B and C, have -es (I iv 23 partis, I v 11 talis, I vi 39 ligantis, I vi 51 turris). At I ii 4, A has omnes, where C1 has omnis, and in general even in A the accusative in -es is the predominant form. For example, A offers auris at II iv 13 and II ix 25, but aures at I ii 127, I ix 5, II v 33, and II ix 3. In view of the instability of the manuscript evidence[10], I have normalized the ending to -es in all cases, considering the instances of -is to be scribal interpolations.
Similarly, I have used the form penna at iv 12 and vii 37, where C offers pinna. Penna is the form given in the ancient manuscripts of Virgil, and attested by Quintilian.
The other manuscripts I have collated belong to the vulgate class. They are not related to each other in the sense that B and C are related, nor does any of them possess independent authority as does G. Within the group firm lines of affiliation are hard to establish, and each of the manuscripts attests a handful of good readings that are found in few or none of the others, either by happy conjecture, or because a reading that was in circulation at the time as a variant chanced to get copied into a few surviving manuscripts. Professor R. J. Tarrant has noted that the presence of the Ex Ponto in north-central France 'can be traced from the eleventh century onwards, first from echoes in Hildebert of Lavardin and Baudri de Bourgeuil, later from the extracts in the Florilegium Gallicum, and finally from the complete texts [which include our H and F] ... that emanate from this region toward the end of the twelfth century' (Texts and Transmission 263); the vulgate manuscripts seem to have been propagated from the text current in the region of Orléans.
M and F show some originality. Their readings at xvi 33 differ somewhat from the version of that passage in HILT. F1's interpolation for the missing pentameter at iii 44 differs from that of MHILT, while M has an interpolated distich following x 6 that is not otherwise attested.
Of the other manuscripts, I agrees with C in reading horas (=oras) for undas at vii 1, while T is the only manuscript collated to have the correct laeuus at ix 119 in the original hand (F2 gives it as a variant reading). Similarly, H and L each have a few peculiar variants.
As a group MFHILT offer a good picture of the readings current in the later mediaeval period, and only rarely have I been obliged to cite a vulgate manuscript from the editions of Heinsius, Burman, or Lenz as testimony for a variant.
Heinsius did not have knowledge of B or C, and seems to have considered his codex Moreti (preserved at the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp as 'Latin, n° 68 [anc. 43] [salle des reliures, n° 32]' in Denucé's catalogue of the museum's collection) to be the best of the poor selection of manuscripts available; at xvi 33, understandably despairing of restoring the true reading, he accepted M's reading pending the discovery of better manuscripts.
M was dated by Heinsius to the twelfth or thirteenth century; Denucé assigns it to the twelfth century.
At viii 85 M alone has the correct ullo for the other manuscripts' illo; this could naturally have been recovered by conjecture. At x 1 it has cumerio, the closest reading in the manuscripts collated to the correct Cimmerio; but Professor R. J. Tarrant informs me that Cimmerio is also found in British Library Harley 2607.
M has suffered from a certain degree of interpolation. Following x 6 there is the spurious distich set cum nostra malis uexentur corpora multis / aspera non possum perpetiendo mori. At ii 9 Falerno is a deliberate alteration of Falerna. At x 49 Niphates is an interpolation from Lucan III 245. At xiii 47 duorum (also given as a variant reading by F2) looks like an attempt to correct the cryptic transmitted reading deorum, and at xv 15 tellus regnata is presumably a metrical correction following the loss of -que from regnataque terra, the reading of the other manuscripts. At xvi 25 eticiusque looks to be a deliberate alteration of Trinacriusque, but I am not sure what the interpolation means.
Francofurtanus Barth 110, used by Burman, shows some signs of independence. At iii 44, where a pentameter has been lost, B and C omit the line, while the other manuscripts, including M, have the interpolation indigus effectus omnibus ipse magis; F has the separate interpolation Achillas Pharius abstulit ense caput, also found in Heinsius' fragmentum Louaniense. F omits viii 51-54, at xi 1 reads Pollio for Gallio, and at xvi 33 has a reading somewhat different from those offered by the other manuscripts.
F alone of the manuscripts collated offers the correct audisse (for audire) at x 17. At xi 21 it and B alone have the correct mihi for tibi (omitted by C). At xiv 7 it has the probably correct muter for mittar, also found in Bodleianus Canon. lat. 1 and Barberinus lat. 26, both of the thirteenth century. With the exception of muter, these readings could have been recovered by conjecture; given the separative interpolation at iii 44, F differs surprisingly little from the other manuscripts.
The thirteenth-century Holkhamicus 322, now British Library add. 49368, contains (with I) the correct hanc at i 16, the other manuscripts having ha, ah (B), or a (C). At xvi 30, where I have printed leuis, the reading of most manuscripts, H has leui, the conjecture of Heinsius; Professor R. J. Tarrant informs me that the same reading is found in Othob. lat. 1469. At iv 45 H's qua libet is the manuscript reading closest to Heinsius' correct quamlibet; most manuscripts have quod licet.
Most other variants in H are trivial errors, although there seems to have been deliberate scribal alteration at x 18 (sucus amarus erat for lotos amara fuit), xiv 38 (Celsius for the usual Septius; Scaliger restored Scepsius), xvi 3 (ueniet for uenit et; presumably the intermediate step was uenit), and perhaps at xiv 31 (miserabilis for uitabilis).
The thirteenth-century Laurentianus 36 32, Lenz's and André's m, has the correct perstas at x 83 for praestas; its reading is also found in P and as a variant of F2. At vii 1 it shares with C the reading horas (=oras), which I have printed in preference to the usual undas.
At viii 15 I has the hypercorrect nil for nihil, and at xiii 26 ethereos ... deos for aetherias ... domos, but in general has few signs of deliberate alteration.
Lipsiensis bibl. ciu. Rep. I 2° 7, of the thirteenth century, has haec at ix 103 for the other manuscripts' et. Haec restores sense to the passage, and was the preferred reading of Heinsius; I consider it a scribal conjecture, now rendered obsolete by Professor R. J. Tarrant's more elegant quae. L's text has clearly been tampered with at xiv 41 (populum ... uertit in iram for populi ... concitat iram), but in general seems to have suffered little from interpolation. It is, however, of little independent value as a witness to the text.
Turonensis 879, written around the year 1200, was first fully collated by André for his edition; Lenz had earlier reported its readings for IV xvi and part of I i. At ix 119 only T and F2 of the manuscripts collated have the correct laeuus, although other manuscripts come close, and the reading could have been recovered by conjecture. At xv 40 T reads transierit saeuos for transit nostra feros; clearly nostra was at some point lost from the text, and metre forcibly restored.
I have also collated the thirteenth-century Parisinus lat. 7993, Heinsius' codex Regius. At ix 46 P offers the correct cernet for credet; cernet is also the reading of M after correction by a later hand and of the thirteenth-century Gothanus membr. II 121. At vi 7 P alone of collated manuscripts agrees with C in reading praestat for the correct perstat. P agrees with L in reading niuibus for the other manuscripts' nubibus at v 5, adeptum for ademptum at vi 49, signare for signate at xv 11, and in the orthography puplicus for publicus at ix 48, ix 102, xiii 5, and xiv 16. The manuscript has many corruptions: a few examples are i 30 igne for imbre, ii 18 supremo for suppresso, iv 6 pace for parte, vi 34 uirtus for uirus, vii 15 piacula for pericula, ix 42 praeterea for praetextam, x 63 in harena for marina, xiv 39 conuiuia for conuicia, and xvi 24 sacri for scripti. However, P has no unique variants with any probability of correctness. To have given a full report of P would have involved a considerable expansion of an already long apparatus, and I have cited the manuscript only occasionally, where a reading is only weakly attested by the other manuscripts.
MF and B2H2I2T2 usually supply titles for the poems. As will be seen from the apparatus, there is considerable variation among the titles, and there is no reason to suppose that they form an authentic part of the transmitted text.
By and large the manuscripts of the fourth book of the Ex Ponto offer a remarkably uniform text of the poems, and one which, considering the late date of the manuscripts, is in surprisingly good condition. I believe that all the manuscripts, with the exception of G, are descended from a single archetype. B and C are the best witnesses to the text of the archetype, although the other, more heavily contaminated and interpolated manuscripts are indispensable, since they correct the peculiar errors of B and C.
The apparatus of this edition is intended to be a full report of BCMFHILT and of the fragmentary G; some reports are also given of P. It includes corrections by original and by later hands.
When no manuscripts are specified for the lemma in an entry, the lemma is the reading for those manuscripts not otherwise specified. For instance, the entry
deductum carmen] carmen deductum M
indicates that deductum carmen is the reading of BCFHILT, while carmen deductum is the reading of M.
I have from time to time cited from earlier editions readings of manuscripts which I have not collated. To make it clear that I have not personally verified these readings, I have added in parentheses after the citation the name of the editor whose report I am using. Professor R. J. Tarrant has inspected some nine manuscripts to see what readings they offered in some particularly vexed portions of the poems; I have similarly indicated when I am obliged to him for information on a manuscript.
The excerpta Scaligeri mentioned at xiii 27 I know of through Heinsius' notes as printed in Burman's edition; according to M. D. Reeve (RhM CXVII [1974] 163), the original excerpts are still extant in Diez 8° 2560, a copy of the editio Gryphiana of 1546. Reeve also gives identifications of certain of Heinsius' manuscripts; when citing Heinsius' codices, I give the modern name when the manuscript has been identified and is still extant.
The greater number of the manuscripts dealt with have been corrected, some heavily. In my apparatus B1 means "the original hand in B" and B2 means "a correcting hand in B". B2ul indicates that the reading of B2 is clearly marked as a variant reading. B2gl indicates that the entry is marked in the manuscript as a gloss; B2(gl) indicates a gloss not marked as such. I have reported glosses where they contribute to the understanding of a textual problem.
If different correctors have been at work in different passages, both are called B2. If a later hand has made a correction after B2, the later hand is called B3. When I place B1 in an entry but do not report B2, it can be assumed that B2 has the lemma as its reading.
Sometimes a corrector has altered the original text so much (without however erasing it entirely) that only the altered reading can be made out. In such cases I have used the siglum B2c. Where a corrector has inserted or altered only certain letters of a word, I have indicated this in the HTML version of this edition by underlining the letters involved. In the Text version, these letters are capitalized.
Where the correction is apparently by the original scribe, Bac indicates the original reading, and Bpc the correction.
The asterisk is used to indicate illegible letters, and the solidus (/) erasures.
When reporting variants, I have tried to indicate the spellings actually found in the manuscripts, but since mediaeval spellings do not in themselves constitute variant readings, they have not usually been reported when the text is not otherwise disturbed. I have been more generous with proper names, but have often excluded confusions of ae, oe, and e, of i and y, of ph and f, of c and t, the doubling of consonants, and the loss or addition of the aspirate.
The apparatus is intended to include a comprehensive listing of all conjectures proposed. When the author of a conjecture is not a previous editor of the poems, I have given a reference either to the publication where the emendation was first proposed, or to the earliest edition I have consulted which reports the emendation. Conjectures of Bentley are from Hedicke's Studia Bentleiana. Conjectures of Professor R. J. Tarrant, Professor J. N. Grant, and Professor C. P. Jones were communicated to me by their authors.
The first editions of the works of Ovid were printed in 1471 by Balthesar Azoguidus at Bologna and by Conradus Sweynheym and Arnoldus Pannartz at Rome. The Bologna edition was edited by Franc. Puteolanus, and the Rome edition by J. Andreas de Buxis. Lenz's edition gives numerous readings from both editions; to judge from his reports, their texts of the Ex Ponto were derived from late manuscripts of no great value. The Roman edition, however, contained the elegant correction of iactate to laxate at ix 73.
For my knowledge of other early editions of the Ex Ponto I have relied upon Burman's large variorum edition of the complete works of Ovid, published at Amsterdam in 1727. The edition contains notes of various editors of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, among them Merula, Naugerius, Ciofanus, Fabricius, and Micyllus. Although I have occasionally quoted from these notes, they are in general of surprisingly little use, containing for the most part unlikely variant readings from unnamed manuscripts and explanations of passages not really in need of elucidation.
The principal event in the history of the editing of the Ex Ponto was the appearance at Amsterdam in 1652 of Nicolaus Heinsius' edition of Ovid. Heinsius took full advantage of the opportunity his travels as a diplomat gave him of searching out manuscripts, thereby gaining a direct knowledge of the manuscripts of the poems which has never since been equalled[11]. Heinsius also possessed an unrivalled felicity in conjectural emendation. Some of his conjectures are unnecessary alterations of a text that was in fact sound, some of his necessary conjectures are trivial, and are already found in late manuscripts of the poems or could have been made by critics of less outstanding capacities; but many are alterations which are subtle and yet necessary to restore sense or Latinity. The present edition returns to the text many conjectures and preferred readings of Heinsius that were ejected by editors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The edition of Heinsius formed the basis of all editions published during the two centuries that followed. Of these editions the most important was the 1727 variorum edition of Burman already referred to. It is from the copy of that edition at the University of Toronto Library that I have obtained my knowledge of Heinsius' notes. Burman was apparently the first editor to make use of F. On occasion he differs from Heinsius in his choice of readings. At xvi 44 he made the convincing conjecture Maxime (codd maxima), subsequently confirmed by B and C. His notes are informative; and my note on x 37-38 in particular is greatly indebted to him.
For poem x Burman reproduced some notes from an anthology of Latin verse for use at Eton, produced by an anonymous editor in 1705[12].
In 1772 Theophilus Harles published at Erlangen his edition of the Tristia and Ex Ponto 'ex recensione Petri Burmanni'. Harles was the first editor to make use of B. In the introduction to his edition Harles relates how he wrote von Oeffele, librarian to the Elector of Bavaria, asking if there was any manuscript in the Elector's library that might be helpful in preparing his edition, and thereby learned of the existence of B. It is clear from Harles' introduction that he fully appreciated the manuscript's importance; and in his notes he gives many of its readings, pointing out where it confirmed suggestions of Heinsius and Burman. However, his text is simply reprinted from Burman's variorum edition.
W. E. Weber's text of Ex Ponto IV in his 1833 Corpus Poetarum Latinorum is in effect a reprint of the Heinsius-Burman vulgate, except that at viii 59 he prints the manuscripts' incorrect accusative form Gigantes (Heinsius Gigantas). But this fidelity to the vulgate text seems not to have been the editor's intention: in his introduction he speaks of 'Heinsianae emendationes felices saepe, superuacuae saepius ... quarum emendationum partem Mitscherlichius eiecit [Göttingen, 1796; I have not seen the edition], maiorem eiicere Iahnius coepit [Leipzig, 1828: the part of the edition containing the Ex Ponto was never published]. dicendum tamen, etiamnunc passim haud paucas fortasse latere Heinsii et aliorum correctiones minus necessarias in uerbis Ouidianis, quas accuratior codicum inter se comparatio, opus sane immensi laboris, extrudet'. It would be understandable enough if Weber, faced with the labour of editing the entire corpus of Latin poetry, found himself unable to effect a radical revision of the text of the Ex Ponto.
In 1853 there appeared at Leipzig the third volume of Rudolf Merkel's first Teubner edition of the works of Ovid, containing his text of the Ex Ponto. The part of Merkel's introduction dealing with the Ex Ponto is entirely concerned with describing the appearance, orthography, and readings of the ninth-century Hamburgensis scrin. 52 F. The manuscript ends, however, at III ii 67, and Merkel says nothing of the basis for his text of the later poems, which in general is the Heinsius-Burman vulgate.
In 1868 B. G. Teubner published at Leipzig Otto Korn's separate edition of the Ex Ponto. Korn's apparatus is the first to have a modern appearance; but this appearance is deceptive, for of the twenty sigla Korn uses, ten are for individual or several manuscripts collated by Heinsius, and only five are for manuscripts collated by Korn himself. The edition is important, since Korn was the first editor to make substantial use of B in constituting his text. Usually he printed the text of B in preference to the vulgate: 'Ceterum eas partes in quibus A caremus, β [=B] libri uestigia secutus restitui, prorsus neglectis recentiorum exemplarium elegantiis, quorum ad normam N. Heinsius, cuius in tertio quartoque libro R. Merkelius assecla est, textum conformauit' (xv).
There was some reason to review critically the vulgate established by Heinsius and Burman. Even Heinsius was capable of error; examples of this in Ex Ponto IV include his preference for the inelegant idem for ille at iii 17, for the impossible ullo instead of the better attested nullo at v 15, and for the obvious interpolation domitam ... ab Hercule at xvi 19 instead of domito ... ab Hectore. His most pervasive fault is a partiality for elegant but unnecessary emendation: often he is guilty of rewriting passages which are in themselves perfectly sound. A typical instance is vii 30: Heinsius' globos is elegant enough, but there is no reason to suspect the transmitted uiros.
Some of the readings proposed or preferred by Heinsius had been unnecessary or wrong, but many had been necessary to make sense of the text; and Korn is often guilty of damaging the text by excluding readings not found in B. The supreme example of this is his restoration of the manuscripts' reading iactate for laxate at ix 73.
Korn used the collation of B by Harles, which had errors and omissions (in his preface Harles had warned that his report might contain errors[13]), so that at i 9 Korn prints in istis and at x 83 perstas, without noting in his apparatus that B's false readings were ab istis and praestas respectively. He was aware that at xi 21 B read mihi, but printed tibi nonetheless, although Burman had already explained why mihi was the correct reading.
A curious feature of Korn's edition is its dual apparatus: below the report of manuscript variants is a listing of passages where his text differs from those of Heinsius and Merkel: 'Lectiones discrepantes editionum Heinsii et Merkelii adposui, ut et quantopere Ouidius Heinsianus a genuina forma discrepet dilucide perspiciatur, et quibus locis a Merkelio discesserim facilius adpareat' (xxxii). Korn ejects such obviously correct readings as leuastis at vi 44 and laxate at ix 73; in each instance the true reading is printed in large type at the bottom of the page. In addition, Korn rather unfairly included as different readings what were in fact only spellings which did not conform to the purified orthography then coming into use. Cymba does not differ from cumba (viii 28), nor is Danubium a variant for Danuuium (ix 80), nor again is Vlysses different from Vlixes (x 9). Finally, the second apparatus at several points misrepresents what Heinsius actually thought.
Korn's confusion on this point is understandable, since determining Heinsius' textual preferences is often more difficult than it might at first appear. Editions were published under his name which did not incorporate all his preferred readings[14]; even the lemmas to his notes are taken from the edition of Daniel Heinsius, and are not a guide to Heinsius' own view of the text, which can only be discovered by reading the actual notes[15]. A good example of this can be found at x 47. Here Heinsius' text reproduces the standard reading Cratesque. The lemma in his note is Oratesque, the reading of Daniel Heinsius' edition. In the note itself Heinsius indicates his preference for the conjecture Calesque, communicated to him by his friend Isaac Vossius. Here Korn, along with all modern editors, prints Calesque in his text; he reports Cratesque as Heinsius' reading.
Korn made one important conjecture in Ex Ponto IV, printing decretis at ix 44 for the manuscripts' secretis.
For the third volume of his complete edition of Ovid, published at Leipzig in 1874, Alexander Riese drew on Korn's edition, but was less radical in following the readings of B: 'nec eclecticam quam dicunt N. Heinsii nec libri optimi rigide tenacem O. Kornii rationem ingressus mediam uiam tenere studui' (vii). Riese restores Heinsius' preferred reading in only about a quarter of the places where it was deserted by Korn; even so, no editor since has shown such independence in the selection of readings.
In 1881 there appeared at London a text of Ex Ponto IV with accompanying commentary by W. H. Williams. The text, which Williams says is drawn from the "Oxford variorum edition of 1825", seems in general to be a reprint of the Heinsius-Burman vulgate with some readings drawn from Merkel's first edition. In spite of occasional conjectures and notes on variant readings, based on information drawn from Burman and Merkel, Williams is not generally concerned with the constitution of the text: his note on x 68 curasque fefelli is 'so Tennyson in the "In Memoriam'". The commentary, which is about eighty pages long, consists largely of discussions of the cognates of various Latin words in other Indo-European languages, 'though the limits of the work preclude more than the data from which a competent teacher can deduce the principles of comparative philology'. A typical note is that on i 11 scribere: 'from [root] skrabh = to dig, whence scrob-s and scrofa = 'the grubber,' i.e. the pig; Grk. γράφω by loss of sibilant and softening'. The edition has been only occasionally useful in editing the poems or writing the commentary.
In 1884 Merkel published his second edition of the poems of exile. In his previous edition he had in general followed Heinsius and Burman in the fourth book; in the new edition, without specifically saying so (although in his introduction he mentions the "codex Monacensis uetustior"), he generally alters his text so as to conform with B's readings. He does not always desert his former text, rightly retaining hanc at i 16, quamlibet at iv 45, and tempus curasque at x 67; he also keeps lux at vi 9 and domitam ... ab Hercule at xvi 19.
In his 1874 monograph De codicibus duobus carminum Ouidianarum ex Ponto datorum Monacensibus Korn had made known the existence of C. S. G. Owen's first edition of the Ex Ponto, printed in Postgate's Corpus Poetarum Latinorum in 1894, was the first edition to report this manuscript as well as B. His text is unduly partial to the readings of B and C, and his well-organized apparatus is so abbreviated as to be deceptive. It cannot be relied upon even for reports of B and C. At ix 73 it gives no hint that for four centuries editors had read laxate; many of Heinsius' preferred readings are similarly consigned to oblivion. At vi 5-6 he reports Housman's ingenious repunctuation, presumably communicated to him by its author.
In 1896 Rudolf Ehwald published his monograph Kritische Beiträge zu Ovids Epistulae ex Ponto. I am often indebted to Ehwald for references he has collected; my notes on i 15 ad summam and xiii 48 quos laus formandos est tibi magna datos could not have been written without the assistance of his monograph. This said, the fact remains that Ehwald's judgment and linguistic intuition were exceptionally poor. He had not relied on Korn's apparatus for his knowledge of B, but had collated it himself; and the intent of his monograph was to establish B's authority as paramount. A typical example can be seen at ix 71. Here FILT offer cum ... uacabit and MH have ut ... uacabit, while the reading of B and C is quod uacabit. In one of the examples Ehwald adduces, Fast II 18, uacat is found in only a few manuscripts, and it can easily be seen how it arose from uacas; all the other examples are instances of quod superest or quod reliquum est. The cumulative effect of these examples is to demonstrate that quod ... uacabit is not a possible reading. This insensitivity to the precise meaning of the passages he discusses is usual with Ehwald, and his book, although useful, is an extremely unsafe guide to the textual criticism of the poems. It has unfortunately exercised a decisive influence on all succeeding editions.
The first of these editions was Owen's 1915 Oxford Classical Text of the poems of exile. In the preface Owen acknowledges the influence of Ehwald: "adiumento primario erat R. Ehwaldi, doctrinae Ouidianae iudicis peritissimi, uere aureus libellus ... in quo excussis perpensisque codicibus poetaeque locutione ad perpendiculum exacta rectam Ponticarum edendarum normam uir doctus stabilire instituit' (viii). In most instances Owen follows Ehwald's recommendations, altering in to ab at i 9, prospicerem to aspicerem at ix 23, and at ix 44 abandoning Korn's decretis for the manuscripts' secretis.
Owen's reliance on Ehwald was noticed by Housman (903-4) in his short and accurate review of Owen's edition: 'In the ex Ponto Mr Owen had displayed less originality [than in his 1889 and 1894 editions of the Tristia] and consequently has less to repent of. Most of the changes in this edition are made in pursuance of orders issued by R. Ehwald in his Kritische Beiträge of 1896; but let it be counted to Mr Owen for righteousness that at III.7.37 and IV.15.42 he has refused to execute the sanguinary mandates of his superior officer'.
As in Owen's earlier edition, the apparatus is so short as to be misleading. His choice of manuscripts is too small, and exaggerates the importance of B and C; even of these two manuscripts his report is inadequate. At ix 73 he rightly prints laxate; the apparatus gives no indication that this is a conjecture, and that all manuscripts, including B and C, read iactate, which he had printed in 1894. At xi 21, where B gives mihi, indicated by Burman as the correct reading, Owen prints tibi and does not mention the variant in the apparatus. The situation is naturally worse with readings of manuscripts other than B and C, and with conjectures. In general, Owen's apparatus can be trusted neither as a report even of the principal readings of the few manuscripts he used, or as a register of critics' views of the constitution of the text.
In the same year as Owen's second text there appeared at Budapest Geza Némethy's commentary on the Ex Ponto, of which twenty-six pages are devoted to the fourth book. The notes are too sparse and elementary to form an adequate commentary, consisting largely of simple glosses. They are a useful supplement to a plain text of the poems, however, and Némethy sometimes notices points missed by others: he correctly glosses Augusti as "Tiberii imperatoris" at ix 70. The notes are based on Merkel's second edition; Némethy lists in a preface his few departures from Merkel's text.
In 1922 Friedrich Levy published his first edition of the Ex Ponto as part of a new Teubner edition of the works of Ovid. The apparatus was a reduced version of that prepared by Ehwald, 'Qui ut totus prelis subiceretur ... propter saeculi angustias fieri non potuit'. Levy's text is virtually identical to Owen's, but the apparatus is more complete. It contains a full report of B and C, and also of the thirteenth-century Gothanus memb. II 121. This last manuscript has the correct cernet at ix 46, where most manuscripts read credet; but otherwise its readings are of very poor quality, consisting of simple misreadings (i 24 magnificas for munificas, vii 30 uento for uenit, viii 37 habendus for abunde), simplified word order (vi 25 tuas lacrimas pariter for tuas pariter lacrimas, xvi 39 et iuuenes essent for essent et iuuenes), and intrusive glosses (viii 61 captiuis for superatis, xvi 47 me laedere for proscindere). The manuscript does not deserve the important place it has in the editions of Levy, Luck, and André[16]; Ehwald presumably included it in his apparatus because of its easy accessibility to him at Gotha, where he lived. No other manuscripts are regularly reported, so Levy's apparatus gives a false impression of the evidence for the text, although he often reports isolated readings from the manuscripts of Heinsius.
Levy omitted conjectures 'quatenus falsae uel superuacuae uidebantur'; the result is that Korn's elegant decretis does not appear even in the apparatus at ix 44, and the same fate befalls Scaliger's coactus at xiii 27.
In 1924 the Loeb Classical Library published A. L. Wheeler's text and translation of the Tristia and Ex Ponto. His text is based on Merkel's second edition, on Ehwald's Beiträge, and on Owen's Oxford Classical Text. In several places he rightly abandons B's reading, printing hanc for ah at i 16 and perstas for praestas at x 83; at iv 45 he was clearly tempted to print Heinsius' quamlibet. His judgment is good, and if Ehwald and Owen had supplied him with more information on other manuscripts and on the Heinsius-Burman vulgate, his text might well have superseded all previous editions. His translation is accurate, and in corrupt passages indicates the awkwardness of the original; I have often quoted from it.
In 1938 there appeared the elaborate Paravia edition of F. W. Levy, who in the period following his earlier edition had altered his name to F. W. Lenz. The text is virtually unchanged from his edition of 1922, but has a much larger apparatus, which includes a large number of conjectures omitted from the earlier edition; I am indebted to Lenz for many of the conjectures I report, particularly at xvi 33. The large size of the apparatus is, however, deceptive; most of the manuscripts he knew of only from the reports of Heinsius, Korn and Owen, and the reports are therefore incomplete: the only manuscripts reliably reported are B and C. Since Lenz does not usually give the lemma for the variants reported, it is difficult to tell which manuscripts offer the reading in the text. Much space is wasted by reports of the readings of several heavily interpolated mediaeval florilegia; more is wasted by an undue attention to mediaeval spellings and attempts to reproduce abbreviations and to show the precise appearance of secondary corrections. These factors combine to render the apparatus virtually unreadable.
In 1963 Georg Luck published the Artemis edition of the Tristia and Ex Ponto, with a German translation by Wilhelm Willige. Luck shows some independence from Lenz, at i 16 printing hanc for ah, at iii 27 sed et for subito, at viii 71 mauis for maius, at viii 86 distet for distat, at ix 73 laxate for iactate, at xii 13 producatur for ut dicatur, and at xiv 7 muter for mittar, each time rightly. He suggests a new conjecture for the incurable xvi 33, and a new and possibly correct punctuation of xii 19. The apparatus is misleading, consisting of isolated readings from B and C and a small number of readings from other manuscripts. No indication is given that hanc at i 16 or pars at i 35 are found only in a few manuscripts, and not in B or C. Luck criticizes modern editors for ignoring the discoveries of their predecessors, and rightly prints Heinsius' Gigantas (codd -es) at viii 59. However, he shows no direct knowledge of Heinsius' notes or of the Burman vulgate, making no mention of such readings as Gete for Getae at iii 52, leuastis for leuatis at vi 44, or fouet for mouet at xi 20. The oldest edition named in his apparatus is that of Riese.
In 1977 F. Della Corte published an Italian translation of the Ex Ponto with an accompanying commentary, of which fifty-eight pages are devoted to the fourth book. Most of the commentary consists of extended paraphrase of the poems; I have found it of little assistance.
The most recent text of the Ex Ponto is the 1977 Budé edition of Jacques André. His text is essentially that of Lenz, although at ix 23 he rightly prints prospicerem instead of B's aspicerem. There are a significant number of misprints in the text, apparatus, and notes, and other signs of carelessness as well.
André makes full reports of only four manuscripts in his apparatus, B, C, T, and Gothanus membr. II 121[17]. This is an inadequate sampling. B and C form a distinct group, and the Gotha manuscript is too corrupt to merit a central part in an apparatus. The result is that T is the sole good representative of the vulgate class of manuscripts that is regularly cited.
For knowledge of many of his secondary manuscripts, André seems to have depended on the edition of Lenz. Since much of Lenz's information was drawn from Heinsius and other earlier editors, this means that André is often giving unverified information from collations made more than three centuries previously. He did not realize that the Antwerp manuscript he collated (our M) was Heinsius' codex Moreti, whose readings Lenz sometimes reports; the result is that he reports the same manuscript twice, under the sigla M and N.
At ix 127 he cites the sixth-century Wolfenbüttel fragment in support of the unassimilated spelling adscite (the assimilated form ascite is supported by the inscriptions and by the ancient manuscripts of Virgil). In fact, the word is not found in the fragment, which preserves only the first three letters of the line.
Finally, André shows insufficient knowledge of the Heinsius-Burman vulgate; this is evident not only from the text but from the introduction, where he prefaces his list of principal editions by saying 'Nous ne mentionnerons que les editions fondées sur des principes scientifiques, dont la première est celle de R. Merkel, Berlin, 1854' (the edition was published at Leipzig in 1853).
In spite of what I have said against it, André's edition has considerable merit. His apparatus is the first to supply a lemma for each variant reading reported, and is clear and easy to read. His selection of manuscripts is inadequate, but at least he makes a full report of the four manuscripts he uses. The apparatus is in every way a great improvement on that of Lenz. At the same time, he provides a clear prose translation, an informative introduction, ample footnotes, and thirteen pages of "notes complémentaires". His notes sometimes come close to forming a true commentary, and I often quote from them.
In preparing this edition of the fourth book of the Ex Ponto, I have carefully read all the editions discussed above, and have attempted to include a comprehensive list of conjectures in the apparatus. I have read Burman's variorum edition with particular attention, and have often restored readings favoured by Heinsius to the text. A complete examination of the manuscripts must await a full edition of all four books of the Ex Ponto; but on the basis of published editions I have selected the nine manuscripts that appeared most likely to assist in establishing the text, and have included full reports of their readings in the critical apparatus. I believe that even this preliminary apparatus gives a clearer picture of the evidence for the text of Ex Ponto IV than any previous edition.