Abstract

‘It is not deceptae tabellae which reveal your conduct to me nor secretly given presents which incriminate you.’ So does Ovid, according to the vast majority of our MSS, complain of the openness of his mistress's infidelity . Tabellae causes no difficulty - wax tablets traditionally carried elegiac love-letters1 - but deceptae, which obviously cannot bear its most usual meaning here, has often been declared corrupt. Burman favoured the variant decepto given by the ‘Sarravianus’ of Heinsius;2 it certainly qualifies mihi aptly enough but leaves tabellae without a much-needed epithet.3 Other editors have resorted to conjectures of widely varying distinction,4 of which easily the most seductive is Heinsius’ male deletae for mihi deceptae. It was prompted by the mihi deletae which appears in one fifteenth-century MS5 and would seem to derive considerable support from Ars Am. 3. 495–6 nec nisi deletis tutum rescribere ceris, | ne teneat geminas una tabella manus