Abstract

This is the way to say in Latin ‘you see my face, though you cannot see the rest of me’. So her. X 53 ‘tua, quae possum, pro te uestigia tango’, 135 ‘non oculis sed, qua potes, aspice mente’, art. III 633 ‘corpora si nequeunt, quae possunt, nomina tangunt’, trist. IV 2 57 ‘haec ego summotus, qua possum,. mente uidebo’, 3 17 sq. ‘esse tui memorem… quodque potest, secum nomen habere tuum’, 10 112 ‘tristia, quo possum, carmine fata leuo’, ex Pont. IV 4 45 ‘absentem, qua possum, mente uidebo’.1 But that is not what Ovid seeks to say: he means ‘you see my face in such fashion as you can’, not in the flesh but in counterfeit presentment; and Latin expresses this meaning otherwise. As Ovid here speaks of his own likeness on a ring, so in ex Pont. II 8 55 he speaks of the likenesses of Augustus Tiberius and Liuia on a medal; and he says ‘nos quoque uestra iuuat quod, qua licet, ora uidemus’. Arellius Fuscus in Sen. suas. 4 I puts the same thought in the same way, ‘cur non ab infantia rerum naturam deosque, qua licet, uisimus, cum pateant nobis sidera et interesse numinibus liceat ?’ In her. XIII 41 sq. ‘qua possum, squalore tuos imitata labores dicar’ many MSS have changed the adverb into quo agreeing with the substantive hard by; and similarly here the ‘quae potes’ of the text has come from ‘qua potes’