In these lines Ovid introduces Althaea's debate whether or not to kill her son Meleager by burning the brand which was his life, because he had killed her two brothers during the Calydonian boar hunt. A. S. Hollis says of line 476 that it contains ‘a forced and almost pointless word-play’. If sanguis is taken in its primary meaning, ‘blood’, this condemnation is quite justified. However, if one takes into account a secondary sense, the word-play acquires more strength. This sense (...) is that of ‘offspring’ or ‘descendant’. Examples of this usage include Virgil, Aeneid 6.835 ‘sanguis meus’ , Horace, Carmen Saeculare 50 ‘clarus Anchisae Venerisque sanguis’ , Odes 3.27.65 ‘regius sanguis’ , and, in the Metamorphoses itself ‘pro…meo veni supplex tibi, Iuppiter, …sanguine’. It may well be that Ovid was intending implications of both meanings in his choice of the word. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is, first, to demonstrate to future editors of the Metamorphoses , whether conservative or sceptical, just how improbable is the reading of the majority of MSS, illas , and how strong are the claims of the variant ilia , first recommended by P.Lejay in 1894 and vigorously championed by E.J.Kenney in 1976; and, second, to suggest an interpretation of this reading that is open to fewer objections than the one proposed by Kenney.I have given (...) above the beginning of Ovid's longest poem as it ought to stand in all modern editions and as it stands in fact in only one, the French school edition of selections edited by Lejay in 1894: ‘Gods, on my undertakings breathe your favour.’ To be sure, all of Ovid's MSS read illas in line 2, and ilia is attested only as a variant in two of them.But majorities, in textual as in other matters, are frequently wrong.Even before the minority report of the Urbinas had been heard, Lejay adopted ilia , av.1.in the Erfordensis.1. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Two Creations: Metamorphoses: i.5–162, 274–415 OVID (Translated by C. Luke Soucy) The Metamorphoses of Ovid opens with the creation of the world, only to recount its destruction and recreation almost immediately after. These stories begin Ovid’s mythic anthology with a sustained exploration of the uncertain origin of humanity, the conflicts in its nature, and its uneasy place in a world governed by divine forces. The following (...) excerpts endeavor to reproduce and contextualize that exploration in a blank verse translation, preserving much of the original wordplay and employing the same number of lines as in the Latin. Before there were seas, lands, and arching skies, Throughout the whole world, nature bore one face, Which was called Chaos, an unordered, rough And tumble mass of lifeless weight, wherein Lay packed the jangling elemental seeds. 10 No Titan1 then brought sunlight to the earth, No Phoebe2 yet wrought full her lunar curve; Nor hung the Earth self-poised in swaddling air, With Amphitrite’s3 arms stretched round her banks. For though the land, the sea, and air were there, 15 The land could bear no tread, the waves no stroke, The mist no light. No being retained its shape, And each opposed with each, for in one self arion 28.3 winter 2021 1. The Sun, son of the Titan Hyperion. 2. Diana, here representing the moon. 3. A Nereid and the wife of Neptune, here representing the sea. 46 the two creations Heat battled cold, wet strove with dry, soft parts Struck against hard, and weight fought weightless things. 20 A god—and better nature—broke this strife. He tore the lands from sky and seas from land, And from the dense air split the crystal heaven. Then, after he released the separate forms, Plucked from that sightless mass, he fastened them 25 In place with common peace. Next, weightless fire Leapt up and claimed its place in vaulting heaven, With air beneath, the next by lightness placed. But denser earth sank under its own weight And drew down heavy masses by its side. 30 The circling water took hold last of all, And wrapped the solid earth inside its flow. Once he, whichever of the gods he was, Had so reduced the whole to living parts, He spun the land into a giant sphere, 35 And, to begin, lest all sides be alike, He ordered straits to stream and swell beneath The sweeping winds and clasp the circled earth. And he made springs and lakes and boundless pools, And tilted banks hemmed in by slanting streams, 40 A share of which the earth absorbs; the rest Runs to the sea, where, in a freer flood, It pounds no banks, but breaks on ocean shores. He ordered fields unrolled and valleys sunk, The forests wreathed with leaves, the mountains raised; 45 And, as two regions on both left and right Divide the sky (a fiery fifth between), So did the might of god segment its load: The same five bounds are stamped upon the earth. The middle zone is home to heat alone, 50 The outer two to snow, but those between He gave both flame and frost in measured fare, And over all, the air—as great a weight Compared to fire as water feels from earth. Ovid 47 He ordered there the mists and there the clouds, 55 And thunder, soon to frighten mortal minds, And, mixed with bolts of light, the flashing Winds. To them, the maker did not grant the air Outright (for even now, when each one blows In his own realm, the brothers quarrel so 60 They scarce withhold from shattering the world). So Eurus sought Arabian lands of dawn And Persian peaks aglow with morning rays, While near the western shores by sunset warmed, Dwells Zephyrus; and wintry Boreas seized 65 The Scythian north, while southern lands drip wet With constant clouds and rain by Auster’s hand. Above them all, the god let aether flow, A liquid lacking weight or earthly trace. Such boundaries had he scarcely set in place 70 Before the stars, which had so long been crushed In sightless gloom, began to light the sky. And... (shrink)

Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.243–4:nec tu iam poteras enectum pondere terraetollere, nympha, caput, corpusque exsangue iacebas.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Change of Perspective in Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.11-23Margaret Worsham MusgroveIn the first of the trojan stories which dominate Metamorphoses books 12 and 13, Ovid recounts a well-known Homeric episode, the omen of the snake at Aulis; a snake climbs into a tree and eats a nestful of eight baby birds plus their mother. According to Calchas' interpretation, this omen symbolized the nine years the Greeks would besiege Troy (...) before taking it in the tenth, and is recalled for the despairing Greek army by Odysseus at Iliad 2.299-329. Ovid's version follows the Homeric story closely, with several verbal parallels. But readers of the Metamorphoses may also see another intertext, the second book of Vergil's Aeneid, Aeneas' account of the fall of Troy, the same event to which the omen looks forward.1 By playing on his readers' knowledge of the Aeneid, Ovid introduces a competing voice into his version, while ostensibly retaining the familiar Homeric story. The present paper will discuss how this intertext is activated to influence our reading of Ovid's "Iliad."2That Ovid's readers might hear Vergilian echoes in a reference to the fall of Troy should not be unexpected. In Vergil's Aeneid, the Trojan War and its aftermath had been transformed into a Trojan experience, seen through Trojan eyes. In the Iliadic section of Ovid's post-Vergilian epic, Ovid must balance his Greek-centered stories, told in greatly condensed form, with the expectations of his Roman readers. By alluding to [End Page 267] the other side of the war, Ovid is able to restore some of the layers of complexity which his brevity has removed from his Greek models, and to remind his readers of the problematic nature of victory and conquest, as Vergil had done. In the process, Ovid shows himself to be an extremely close reader of both Homer and Vergil; his use of the two of them together in this episode can even help elucidate the relationship between his two great epic predecessors.Ovid and HomerOvid's account of the omen nearly parallels Odysseus' speech in Homer; Ovid is more compact, but agrees with Homer in many respects. The visual perspective of both passages is emphatically Greek. In Homer, the story is told by an eyewitness, Odysseus, who reminds the Greek army that they had all observed the omen:(Iliad 2.301-2)Ovid, although telling the story in his own, or "first-level," narrative voice, notes that "the Greeks saw" the omen: Danai videre (Met. 12.13). In both scenes, the snake appears suddenly at a sacrifice and creeps into a plane-tree near the altar.(Iliad 2.305-10)hic patrio de more Iovi cum sacra parassent, ut vetus accensis incanduit ignibus ara, serpere caeruleum Danai videre draconem in platanum, coeptis quae stabat proxima sacris.(Met. 12.11-14)Ovid's specification that the sacrifice was being made to Jupiter illustrates an efficient technique of condensation. Although Homer says the sacrifice was generally "to the immortals" (athanatoisi, Iliad 2.306), the snake was sent by Zeus, who is also credited with its metamorphosis [End Page 268] (Iliad 2.309, 318). The presence of Zeus is necessary for the prophetic function of the snake, in Kirk's words (1985, ad Iliad 2.307-18), "since only he could determine or recognize in advance the outcome of the war." Ovid allows time for only one mention of a divinity in this scene, but includes the one deity crucial to the Homeric episode.3 When Ovid introduces the birds, every element of his sentence can be paralleled in Homer's lines:(Iliad 2.311-13)nidus erat volucrum bis quattuor arbore summa(Met. 12.15)Both Homer and Ovid place the verb "be" near the beginning of the line, followed by words for the birds themselves; both note the birds' location (the top of the tree) and number (eight, for the moment). Thus Ovid sets the stage for the portent.4But we should also consider the Homeric details which Ovid omits. First, he omits Homer's pathetic details of the birds and of their mother.(Iliad 2.314-17)Homer's... (shrink)

Incongruity and anachronism characterize Ovid's treatment of the gods and mythological figures in the Metamorphoses; frequently the resulting discrepancy between the superhuman world of mythology and characteristic aspects of Roman society serves to pillory that society as well as to undermine the dignity of the traditional mythology. Linguistic parody is one of the tools Ovid uses to highlight these discrepancies. An example recently noted is that of the serenade delivered by Polyphemus the landlubber to his marine beloved, Galatea : (...) by casting this in the form of Gebetsparodie, Ovid mocks the literary topoi of the paraclausithyron as well as reducing the heroic status of the mythological protagonists. I suggest that in Tiresias’ brief appearance in Metamorphoses 3 Ovid imitates the pedantic locutions of jurists’ language in order to demonstrate how trivial and undignified are the preoccupations of the bickering Olympians. (shrink)

The problems recently detected in the famous words ars adeo latet arte sua (Ov. Met. 10.252) can be resolved if the line is repunctuated on the basis of an unjustly neglected interpretation put forward by Byzantine and Renaissance scholars.

The saga of Ceyx, king of Trachis, begins at Met. 11.266 and continues to 11.748. Ceyx' adventures form the longest single episode in the Metamorphoses , slightly longer than the Phaethon legend . Three metamorphoses take place in the course of the Ceyx narrative. The first is that of Ceyx' brother Daedalion who is transformed into a hawk. The second transformation occurs in the course of the exiled Peleus' visit to Ceyx when a wolf attacks Peleus' cattle and (...) sheep and is eventually turned into stone. The third metamorphosis is that of Ceyx and his wife Alcyone into halcyons. The linking together of these three metamorphoses was entirely an Ovidian invention: it had never been done before. It is therefore important to see the Ceyx story as a whole, as it was put together by Ovid. Attention naturally concentrates on the most interesting episode in it – the Ceyx–Alcyone – but the Daedalion and Peleus episodes are integral parts of the narrative and not separate legends. The story is framed by the contrasting transformations of the two brothers. The fierce and bellicose Daedalion becomes a bird of prey . The gentle and uxorious Ceyx becomes a happily paired halcyon . It is ironic that we first meet Ceyx when he is mourning the transformation of his brother into a bird, since the same end awaits him. The brothers' characters are very different but their fates are similar. Ceyx' dealings with Peleus bring out the king of Trachis' hospitable, peace-loving, godly and husbandly qualities and give us a rounded and detailed picture of his personality to balance the developed character-study of his wife Alcyone which is to follow. The spotlight passes from Ceyx to Alcyone at Met. 11. 410. (shrink)

These lines come from the passage describing the mourning of the natural world following the death of Orpheus. A. D. Melville translates as follows:[‘ … ] and naiads wore,and Dryads too, their mourning robes of blackAnd hair dishevelled.’.

This paper discusses the transcription of three Greek proper names in Ovid, Metamorphoses Book 10. It argues that we should read Haemon, Amycliade and Panchaica rather than Haemum, Amyclide and Panchaia.

This article argues that the incomplete acrosticINCIP- at Ov.Met. 15.871–5 can be completed. If viewed as a ‘gamma-acrostic’, we can supply -iamfrom line 871, so that it receives its termination in retrospect. Ovid's manipulation of gamma-acrostic conventions caps his persistent confusion of beginnings and endings, and emphasizes the role of the reader as co-creator of his metamorphicœuvre.

Ovidians continue to be puzzled by the 404-line speech put into the mouth of Pythagoras in book 15 of the Metamorphoses. Questions of literary decorum and quality are insistently raised: how does the philosopher's popular science consort with the predominantly mythological matter of the preceding fourteen books? Do Pythagoras' revelations provide some kind of unifying ground, a ‘key’, for the endless variety of the poem? Can one take the Speech as a serious essay in philosophical didactic, or is it (...) all a mighty spoof, as intentionally laughable, perhaps, as the imperial panegyric with which the narrative of book 15 concludes? Or should we beware of imposing modern tastes on Ovid's original audience, and respect the Hellenistic and Roman predilection for scientific poetry? This article seeks to establish further contexts for the evaluation of the Speech of Pythagoras through a study of Ovid's allusive practice within the Greco-Roman tradition of hexameter epos. The figure who provides a foundation for Ovid's construction of his own poetic genealogy turns out to be the Greek philosophical poet Empedocles. The resulting reflections on Ovid's manipulation of generic conventions may be timely in the light of the recent appearance of sophisticated and fresh approaches to the question of whether the Metamorphoses is, or is not, an epic. (shrink)

Many attempts have been made to define the precise philosophical outlook of Ovid's account of cosmogony from the beginning of the Metamorphoses, while numerous different and interconnected influences have been identified including Homer, Hesiod, Empedocles, Apollonius Rhodius, Lucretius and Virgil. This has led some scholars to conclude that Ovid's cosmogony is simply eclectic, a magpie collection of various poetic and philosophical snippets haphazardly jumbled together, and with no significant philosophical dimension whatsoever. A more constructive approach could see Ovid's synthesis (...) of many of the major cosmogonic works in the Graeco-Roman tradition as an attempt to match textually his all-encompassing history of the universe that purports to stretch from the first beginnings of the world up to the present day. Furthermore, if the beginning of the Metamorphoses is designed to be both cosmologically and intertextually all-encompassing, it is surprising that the influence of arguably the major philosophical work on cosmogony from the ancient world, Plato's Timaeus, remains to be evaluated. (shrink)

Latona enters the Ovidian spotlight in two episodes in Metamorphoses 6, confronting first Niobe and then some rude Lycian farmers. This essay begins by drawing attention to two features of these episodes: first, Ovid’s reshaping of the tradition to highlight Latona’s peculiar susceptibility to eviction, and second, the way the Lycian story in particular not only reenacts the disrespect the story warns against but, more startlingly, brings Latona’s very divinity into question. The essay ends by linking these humiliations to (...) Latona’s anomalous status as a goddess who is also a fully embodied mother. (shrink)

After giving birth Latona arrives tired and thirsty in Lycia, but the locals refuse her a drink from their lake, so she turns them into frogs. Critics usually endorse Latona’s justice. This article reexamines the episode to develop a balanced reading and then historicizes that reading in relation to law and Augustus’ aqueduct projects. The conflict between goddess and mortals dramatizes tensions between emperor and citizens with conflicting interests in water. Ovid’s Lycian myth opens new perspectives on these conflicts and, (...) more generally, on the place of law in Augustan Rome. (shrink)

This article provides a close reading of Ovid's ecphrastic depiction of two Centaur lovers and their ideally mutual relationship, an episode that serves as a digression in the midst of Nestor's narration of the Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs in Met. 12. Ovid uses allusions to two didactic poems, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura and Ovid's own Ars Amatoria III, as he explores in the Cyllarus-Hylonome interlude both hybridity itself and the relationships and possible combinations of a number of conceptual (...) opposites: natura and cultus, human and animal, male and female, love and war, and the contrasting values of lyric-elegiac and epic poetry. A final section discusses how the issues explored within the digression reflect a concern with similar issues in the wider context of Book 12 and of the Metamorphoses as a whole. (shrink)

Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ovid’s Causes: Cosmogony and Aetiology in the MetamorphosesMargaret Worsham MusgroveK. Sara Myers. Ovid’s Causes: Cosmogony and Aetiology in the Metamorphoses. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. xvi + 206 pp. Cloth, $32.50.This book takes seriously Ovid’s claim in the proem of the Metamorphoses that his work will encompass the entire universe. Ovid’s primaque ab origine mundi (1.3) must be read as a statement of thematic, (...) not merely chronological scope. “The origin of the world” will continue as a central concern throughout the poem. Myers reads the cosmogony of Book 1 as a continuation of the programmatic statement of the proem: Ovid is allying himself with the tradition of natural-philosophical poetry, as originated by Hesiod and adapted to Hellenistic standards by Apollonius and Vergil. The theme of cosmogony does not merely “frame” the poem, and does not surface only in the explicit creation stories of Book 1 and the didactic discourse of Pythagoras in 15, but instead pervades the entire work. Aetiological stories, as explanations of where individual phenomena come from, continue the scientific theme displayed in the opening cosmogony. The whole Metamorphoses can thus be read as an exploration of the type of poetry which investigates origins of everything, from the universe to natural features to cultural institutions. We should credit Myers with elucidating this cosmogony-aetiology link, which breaks us free of narrow, literal categories, and allows us to see the similar poetic aims of these two literary devices. Her introductory chapter, exploring “The Generic Question” of the Metamorphoses and of post-Callimachean literature in general, points out how recent Latin scholarship has already begun to blur some of those long-unquestioned black-and-white distinctions between genres.At the same time, Myers acknowledges the clash between science (or natural philosophy) and myth. Ovid uses “scientific” language, often in the form of Lucretian allusions, to recount fantastic mythological tales of creatures whose very existence would be questioned by the philosophers. Chapter 1 examines metamorphosis stories which involve natural phenomena, such as the cosmos itself, various animals, etc. Metamorphosis is seen and narrated as a kind of scientific process; hence Ovid’s detailed descriptions of the moment of transformation. [End Page 338] But by calling attention to the incongruity of his subject and his language, Ovid questions the authority of cosmogony to validate myth and of myth to convey the truth.The remainder of Myers’ book focuses on the way in which Ovid unmasks the devices used in aetiological poetry’s claim to a voice of authority. Chapter 2 examines the Alexandrian affiliations of aetiological stories explaining the origins of cultural or religious institutions. This chapter follows something of the approach of P. Knox in the studious attempt to look at the elegiac, unepic features of Ovid’s narrative. Myers investigates the language used to mark a story as an aetion: words such as causa, origo, novus, and unde. Partially through comparison with Ovid’s technique in Fasti (a consistently aetiological, didactic poem) and through examination of the fragments of Callimachus, she also points out certain narrative techniques as characteristic of aetiology. The embedded narrative, related by a supposedly authoritative informant, is revealed as part of the modus operandi of didactic and aetiological poetry.This chapter is perhaps Myers’ most valuable contribution, because it gives us a rationale for some of the seemingly odd features of Ovid’s narrative. One example: why, at Met. 4.772–89, are Perseus’ most famous adventures reported only in indirect statement? Variatio for its own sake is not an adequate answer. Genre would seem to be part of the explanation: battles with monsters belong in epic, a genre which Ovid eschews, at least for the moment. But beyond that negative explanation, Myers suggests a positive one. After the indirect report, someone asks Perseus for an aetiological story: why Medusa had snakes in her hair. His answer in direct speech displays several of the linguistic features which Myers has identified as characteristic of aetia. Thus, Ovid depicts Perseus not so much at a Homeric banquet, with stories of battles and conquests, but at a Callimachean one, with learned exchanges of aetiological myths (cf... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Penelope in Ovid's Metamorphoses 14.671Mark PossanzaIn a passage in Ovid's Metamorphoses, book 14, the god Vertumnus, who has transformed himself into an old woman, is speaking to the orchardist nymph Pomona, who finds plants and trees more companionable than the opposite sex:1concubitusque fugis nec te coniungere curas.atque utinam uelles! Helene non pluribus essetsollicitata procis nec quae Lapitheia mouitproelia nec coniunx +timidi aut+ audacis Vlixei.(668-71) timidi aut codd.Vertumnus (...) offers three mythological exempla, Helen, Hippodamia, and Penelope, to persuade the nymph that if she did show an interest in men, she would attract more suitors than those illustrious heroines. Although the reference to Penelope in 671 is obvious and the epithet audacis looks genuine, it is not clear whether what lies hidden under the corrupt +timidi aut+ has to do with Penelope or Ulysses.2 Most of the proposed [End Page 89] emendations are based on the assumption that the words after coniunx belong to an epithet phrase that describes Ulysses.3 Of these, timidis audacis Vlixei, adopted by Heinsius from Vaticanus Barberinianus Lat. 70 (13th cent.),4 seems by far the least implausible, although the super fi cial attractions of the collocation timidis audacis begin to fade when one considers that the addition of timidis fits neither Ulysses nor the context. If we take audax as an epithet expressing a permanent quality of the hero, then timidus unduly limits the range of that quality embodied in audax, a quality that allowed Ulysses to best foes, the Cyclops, for example, who certainly cannot be called timidus. If, on the other hand, we are to interpret the combination of timidus and audax as the speaker's jibe at Ulysses' pretensions to heroic valor,5 it must be pointed out that such a jibe, while appropriate in the mouth of an Ajax, is completely out of place here where suitors, courtship, and sex are uppermost in the speaker's mind, not the ranking of Achaean warriors.6 Moreover, the [End Page 90] epithet phrase timidis audacis, by virtue of its riddling quality (are we to think of the encounter with Dolon? the slaughter of the suitors?) distracts attention from Penelope herself, who is, after all, the exemplum. In short, the addition of timidus either disparages the heroic stature of Ulysses in a context where such disparagement is clearly out of place or undercuts the force of the Penelope exemplum by giving prominence to the husband, when in fact it is Penelope who is the more important of the two.I want, therefore, to suggest that in its original form the line contained an epithet for Penelope, prudens, which can be taken as the equivalent of the Homeric epithet most often applied to Penelope, 7: line 671 would then read "proelia nec coniunx prudens audacis Vlixei." It may be coincidence that prudens, corresponding to Homeric, identifies the unnamed coniunx through her characteristic trait, which associates her with Pomona, who exhibits that same trait in shunning suitors. And it may be coincidence that prudens produces with audacis a pleasing iunctura that is worthy of our poet, bringing together the distinctive and contrasting traits of husband and wife that helped to make possible their reunion.8 But that both of these coincidences should occur within the metrical space () occupied by the corruption timidi [End Page 91] aut is one coincidence too many, especially in a context where Penelope's prudentia and Ulysses' audacia are relevant to the situation of Pomona and Vertumnus.There is more to these epithets than the clever collocation of contrasting traits. When a lover in disguise (Vertumnus), speaking to his beloved (Pomona), cites Penelope as an example of a woman much sought after by suitors, the poet achieves a heightening of the erotic tension through the Penelope exemplum because the meeting between Pomona and the disguised Vertumnus recalls the meetings between Ulysses, disguised as a beggar, and his wife, Penelope, in the Odyssey. In its present context the exemplum suggests that the revelation of identity, though long delayed (Odysseus' by his taking revenge on the suitors and Vertumnus' by his telling of the Iphis-Anaxarete tale), will bring the two... (shrink)

Here Ovid treats the demiurge's disposition of weightless aether over the other elements. This section of the cosmogony follows one that is devoted to the sphere of aer where the creator settles the turbulent winds and other threatening meteorological phenomena. Recently Denis Feeney has suggested that Ovid's demiurge ‘does not act in a very epic manner’ by placing weightless aether on top of the winds. He argues: ‘The oddness of the control is caught in a moment of comparison with Vergil's (...) universe: Vergil's Jupiter controls the winds by putting on top of them a mass of mountains, while Ovid's mundi fabricator places above them the aether, explicitly “liquid and lacking weight, containing nothing of earthly sediment” ’. Feeney's observation has much to recommend it. To begin with, Ovid's excursus on the cardinal winds evokes Vergil's set piece on the cave of Aeolus in Aeneid l. And the demiurge's subsequent placement of aether seems to echo the action of the Vergilian Jupiter. However, Feeney's conclusion that the demiurge's action is ‘redolent of anti-epic allegiances’ needs some adjustment.4 For his reading neglects an important verbal and structural allusion to the cosmogony of Lucretius . Accordingly, the conclusion to be drawn from lines 67–8 may be, not that Ovid momentarily reveals his Callimachean colours in an epic context, but that he plays Lucretius off against Vergil and so establishes his own position in the epic tradition of cosmological poetry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books 1–5Stephen M. WheelerWilliam S. Anderson, ed. Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Books 1–5. With introduction and commentary. Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. vi 1 578 pp. Cloth $49.95; paper, $21.95.For those who labor in the vineyard of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the vintage of 1997 should be a memorable one. One of the year’s most notable releases is Anderson’s second installment to his Oklahoma text and commentary. The (...) first volume—introduction, text, and commentary to books 6–10—appeared hysteron proteron in 1972. The new edition, covering books 1–5, resembles its older sibling in format and conception but also benefits from developments in Ovidian scholarship since 1972. The introduction follows the same basic framework as its predecessor in surveying Ovid’s career, subsequent reception of the Metamorphoses, plan and tone of the poem, poet at work, manuscript tradition, and selected bibliography. But the contents of each section are [End Page 170] updated, and exemplary discussions are recast to reflect the material of books 1–5. The Latin text is, of course, different too. Now Anderson reprints, without critical apparatus, the sixth edition of his Ovidius, Metamorphoses (Stuttgart and Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1993), which, incidentally, incorporates illa instead of illas at 1.2. After the text come the notes, which run to 420 pages. The average of one page of commentary per ten lines of poetry equals the rate of the earlier volume. This may seem a lot at first sight, especially given the compact format of the pages. Yet if one compares Anderson’s ratio of commentary to text with that of other commentaries on individual books of the Metamorphoses, there is little significant difference (Bömer is the exception!). Finally, the volume is equipped with a ten-page index.The format of the new commentary is more reader-friendly than the old. In addition to the headings (in capitals) for major episodes, Anderson now inserts subheadings (in italics) for individual scenes, which help to articulate what he takes to be the structural units within each book. Moreover, he introduces each book with a survey of its contents, and he prefaces each myth or scene with background information about sources, literary models, and Ovid’s own innovations. The notes themselves offer a reasonably current and welcome alternative to the existing English-language commentaries that cover books 1–5: A. G. Lee (book 1); J. Moore-Blunt (book 2); A. A. R. Henderson (book 3); and the briefer notes of D. E. Hill to books 1–4 and 5–8. Of these, the most closely comparable with Anderson are the school commentaries of Lee and Henderson. While Anderson cites Lee frequently in his comments on book 1, the differences of approach and interpretation between the two are so great that there is little danger of duplication and plenty of room for dialogue. Henderson’s commentary, which receives no notice from Anderson, is pitched primarily to the sixth-form pupil and first-year university student. Anderson aims a little higher: high enough indeed that he keeps his reader abreast of Bömer’s commentary. But Anderson generally refrains from citing secondary literature, even though his views are clearly informed by the work of scholars such as Bernbeck, Otis, Segal, Galinsky, and Solodow.Nowhere in the new edition does Anderson actually state who his audience is. Perhaps it goes without saying that such a commentary is directed toward students. But perceptive readers will realize that Anderson engages a multiple audience that includes teachers and scholars as well. It may therefore be helpful to spell out what level of competence Anderson expects of his readers. In the first place, thorough familiarity with Latin morphology is required, because Anderson provides few prompts. Naturally, rare verb forms receive explanation, and odd items, such as Greek declensional endings, are clarified. If Anderson is sparing in morphological assistance, he is quite generous in matters of syntax, regularly explaining case usage and complex verbal constructions. He also draws attention to characteristic syntactic features of Ovid’s style, such as the pluperfect tense to set a scene, participial subordination, or the relative [End Page 171] clause placed before... (shrink)

This paper publishes for the first time 132 conjectures by Nicolaus Heinsius on Ovid’s Metamorphoses 1‒4. The value and possible motivations of each proposal are briefly assessed.