Part 4

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, [Greek: b] [=_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.

[Footnote 13: 'Diligenter autem et religiose tractaui codicem et singulas epistolas bis, et in locis uexatis saepius contuli. Neque tamen, quae hominum est imbecillitas, aciem oculorum quaedam effugisse, negabo' (xi-xii).]

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.

[Footnote 14: A. Grafton has noted that Heinsius' publisher Elzevier seems to have been unwilling to alter the text as it already existed (_JRS_ LXVII [1977], 173). I owe my knowledge of Heinsius' editorial practices as here described to Professor R. J. Tarrant, who has examined the Harvard copies of the 1664 edition of Heinsius' text (without notes), the 1670 Leiden edition of Bernard Cnippingius, which reproduces Heinsius' notes, and the 1663 reprint of Daniel Heinsius' edition.]

[Footnote 15: Consequently any statements I make on Heinsius' editorial practices are based on explicit statements in his notes.]

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. [Greek: graphô] 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.

[Footnote 16: My knowledge of the manuscript is drawn from André's apparatus.]

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.

[Footnote 17: He collated four other manuscripts, _M_, _Bernensis bibl. munic. 478_, _Diuionensis bibl. munic. 497_, and _British Library Burney 220_, but gives their readings only occasionally.]

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.

P. OVIDI NASONIS

EPISTVLARM EX PONTO LIBER QVARTVS

CONSPECTVS SIGLORVM

_G_

Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: Cod. Guelf. 13.11 Aug. 4° (fragmentum Guelferbytanum) saec v/vi

continet ix 101-8 et 127-33, xii 15-19 et 41-44. uersus saepe non integri.

_B_

Monacensis lat. 384 saec xii

_C_

Monacensis lat. 19476 saec xii

_M_

Antuerpiensis Musei Plantiniani Denucé 68 saec xii/xiii codex Moreti Heinsianus

_F_

Francofortanus Barth 110 saec xiii

_H_

Holkhamicus 322, nunc British Library add. 49368 saec xiii

_I_

Laurentianus 36 32 saec xiii primus Mediceus Heinsii

_L_

Lipsiensis bibl. ciu. Rep. I 2° 7 saec xiii

_T_

Turonensis 879 saec xii/xiii

* * * * *

Interdum aduocatur:

_P_

Parisinus lat. 7993 saec xiii Regius Heinsii

I

Accipe, Pompei, deductum carmen ab illo debitor est uitae qui tibi, Sexte, suae. qui seu non prohibes a me tua nomina poni, accedet meritis haec quoque summa tuis; siue trahis uultus, equidem peccasse fatebor, 5 delicti tamen est causa probanda mei. non potuit mea mens quin esset grata teneri; sit precor officio non grauis ira pio. o quotiens ego sum libris mihi uisus in istis impius in nullo quod legerere loco! 10 o quotiens, alii uellem cum scribere, nomen rettulit in ceras inscia dextra tuum!

incipit liber quartus _B2_ incipit quartus sexto pompeio _M_ liber ·iiii· sexto pompeio _F_ incipit ·iiii· sexto pompeio _H2(?)_ ad pompeium lib ·iiii· _I2_ hanc epistulam mittit sexto pompeio _L_ || 1 deductum carmen] carmen deductum _M_ || qui] cui _Williams_ || seu] si _ILF2ul_ || 4 accedet] accedat _M_ || summa] summe _C_ || 5 trahis] trahes _Owen (1894)_ || uultus _om C_ || equidem] equid e _B_ || 7 quin esset] esset quin _H_ || 9-10 _add F2 in marg_ || 9 o] di _B_ dii _I_ || in] ab _B_ || istis] illis _F_ || 10 quod] quid _F2_ || 11 alii] aliis _L_ aliIS _M2c_ || uellem cum scribere] cum uellem scribere _B_ uellem conscribere _F1_ uellem describere _P_