Ovid Metamorphoses Book IV: Introduction, Text, Apparatus Criticus, Textual Commentary, Appendices (Including Bibliography)

Abstract

The primary purpose of this thesis is the establishing, in so far as that is possible, of the text of Book IV of Ovid's poem. For reasons explained more fully in Part I of the Introduction, the over-reliance of recent editors on the Lactantian MSS. has produced a text of a one-sided nature. The problem would have been more easily soluble if the manuscript-tradition itself of the poem had been stronger and less contaminated, if, to take an oversimplified hypothesis, an early Lactantian archetype could have been balanced against an early non-Lactantian archetype. As things are, however, contamination between MSS. is so widespread, and so unpredictable in its effects, that the truth may be preserved virtually anywhere, even in very few MSS. (see, for example, poma v.127, latebras v.407, and patriaeque vv.680 and 686, which I would regard, despite their slender attestation, as unquestionably correct) : it therefore follows that much is to be gained from the use, in establishing the text, of as many manuscripts as possible; the thesis has as its backbone my own collation of 203 MSS. I have considered it wise to collate again for myself manuscripts used by previous editors because of the very wide scale errors of reporting which have, with time, crept in (see Appendix II).

In addition I have dealt, in Part II of the Introduction, and in some of the Appendices, with details of orthography, in order to establish, as nearly as one may from surviving evidence, Ovid's usage in matters of spelling.

The Commentary deals largely with textual questions, its main purpose being to justify the choice of text, although other subjects are occasionally touched on (e.g. the Pyramus and Thisbe myth). Appendices deal with some matters of kindred interest.