The Oxford Classical Texts, or Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, are renowned for their reliability and presentation. The series consists of a text without commentary but with a brief apparatus criticus at the front of each page. There are now over 100 volumes, representing the greater part of classical Greek and Latin literature. The aim of the series remains that of including the works of all the principal classical authors. Although this has been largely accomplished, new volumes are still being published (...) to fill the remaining gaps, and old editions are being revised in the light of recent research or replaced. (shrink)

In spite of the labours of Sedlmayer,1 Ehwald2 and Palmer,3 it cannot be said that there exists a completely satisfactory edition of Ovid's Heroides. One or all of these editors sometimes leave a corrupted text, sometimes adhere too closely to a manuscript reading, and sometimes introduce untenable emendations. A new edition is called for, with revised collati ons of the known manuscripts, and an augmented apparatus criticus, exhibiting the large class of what I may term the ‘Vulgate’ manuscripts, which represents (...) a tradition different from, and probably later than that of our chief authority, the excellent but unfortunately incomplete eleventh-century Parisinus , which, like all primary manuscripts of this type, contains many readings or corruptions which should not on account of its mere authority be accepted slavishly. Light is often thrown on the text from less important sources, and the truth may be recovered from manuscripts of the ‘Vulgate’ family, where our better authority fails. In this connexion the study of my own manuscript has led me to some conclusions in certain passages which I venture to set forth as suggestions towards an improved constitution of the text of the Heroides. Though it is clear from the preceding investigation into its nature that O is no primary manuscript, but belongs rather to that large class which has passed through various stages of reproduction involving alterations due either to carelessness of copyists or, more rarely, to deliberate alteration, it presents at the same time a phenomenon not unusual with such manuscripts, inasmuch as it often supports the best tradition, and in some cases preserves a reading which yields the truth, or from which the truth can be elucidated. I have used the following symbols: P = Parisinus 8242 s. xi. E = Etonensis s. xi. G = Gueferbytanus s. xii. V = Schedae Vindobonenses s xii. O = my manuscript s. xiv. D = Dresdensis s. xiii. ω = all or the majonly of the ‘Vulgate’ manuscripts. ζ = some of these manuscripts. (shrink)

Before proceeding to consider certain passages of Silius in detail I should like to enter a protest against the undue disparagement which has been meted out to this poet. The letter of Pliny , containing reflexions suggested by the voluntary death by which with stoical fortitude he sought release from the agony of an incurable tumour, presents to us a character which if not great was attractive; the character of a wealthy and kindly noble, who had made no enemies; one (...) whose house was the resort of men of letters; a devotee of poetry, who worshipped Vergil with almost religious veneration; a lover of the beautiful, who found his pleasure according to the accepted Roman fashion in amassing works of art and tasteful country mansions. Pliny's terse criticism of his poem ‘scribebat carmina maiore cura quam ingenio’ is more just than that of modern critics. Though Silius is not a great poet, a poet he is, with merits distinctly his own. His Punica is hardly an epic proper, but is rather a chronicle in verse: as such its author displays considerable skill in the clearness with which he marshals the mass of events, and in the realistic force of his descriptions, especially that of the plague , and those of the numerous battles, and particularly of the sea-fights ; and in the elaboration of geographical detail, where the vividness of the topographical presentation shows a well-trained eye and no common literary power The numerous episodes which enliven the poem, such as the legend of Pyrene , the killing of the monster serpent , the pretty description of Pan , are executed with much imaginative fancy which recalls the manner of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Again there is a dignity and sustained elevation of language which results not unfrequently in vigorous, well-turned phrases of no ordinary merit. Such are the expression for an echo xiv. 365 ‘clamat scopulis clamoris imago,’ or for breaking through the ranks of the treacherous Greeks xvii. 425 ‘periuria Graia resignat,’ or again the fine line describing the sobbing sound made by water rushing into a wrecked ship's hull and out again xiv. 550 ‘mox sua ponto | singultante anima propulsa refunditur unda.’. (shrink)

The MS. 410 of the Bibliotheque publique of Valenciennes consists of 70 leaves of vellum, written in Caroline minuscules in the 11th century. The titles Ivvenalis liber primvs incipit and Explicit Ivvenalis. Incipit Persivs are in small rustic capitals. The MS. contains Juvenal and Persius in that order. The last leaf but one has been cut out, that containing Pers. vi. 8 dant–vi. 71 exits. Juvenal, Sat. xvi, follows at the end of Sat. xiv, fol. 56v: then Sat. xv follows (...) on Sat. xvi, fol. 57v, after which comes Persius, fol. 60v, beginning with the Choliambi, which precede Sat. i. The MS. has usually 32, occasionally 34, lines on a page. There are interlinear glosses, but no scholia, and no titles to the Satires, with three exceptions: Pers. iv. ‘In hac satira reprehendit illos qui honores cupiebant’ Juv. v. ‘Ad trebium loquitur’ xi. ‘De uictus comparatione.’. (shrink)

quam dolor hie umquam spatio euanescere possit,leniat aut odium tempus et hora meum.Here “spatio” means “lapse of time” : it is illustrated by A. A. II. 113forma bonum fragile est, quantumque accedit ad annos,fit minor et spatio carpitur ipsa suo.As regards the whole couplet, besides at this place, it is found also after line 40 in all the MSS. except the Galeanus Vaticanus and Phillipps MS. There, though it fits in with the context, it is not required: here it is (...) indispensable. It should therefore be omitted from the text after line 40, where its presence is due to that species of interpolation which consisted in the insertion of other portions of a writer's work kindred in meaning, on which see Mr. Hall's Companion to Classical Texts, p. 198. (shrink)

Since the publication of my critical edition in 1889 the Tristia of Ovid has received some attention. A paper in Hermathena, vol. vii. by Professor R. Ellis contains several conjectural emendations, and in a public lecture on The Second Book of Ovid's ‘Tristia’ , this veteran scholar analysed the intricate contents of Book II. Two learned pamphlets by Dr. R. Ehwald, Ad historiam carminum Ouidianorum recensionemque symbolae deal with the history of the text, and the textual criticism and interpretation generally. (...) Dr. Paul Vogel's Kritische und exegetische Bemerkungen zu Ovid ‘Tristien’ is a valuable contribution to the understanding of the text and its interpretation. (shrink)

In his elegiacs Ovid did not permit the elision of the final syllable of an iambic word ‘in an arsis , i.e. first syllable of dactyl or spondee.’ See L. Müller, De re metrica, ed. 2, p. 341. These two are the only lines in which this rule is transgressed, for in Trist. II. 296, which used to appear asstat Venus Vltori iuncta, uir ante foreswas brilliantly restored conjecturally by Bentley, and has since been found to be the actual reading (...) of our best manuscript, the Marcianus. The soundness of the text in the two lines obelized above is still open to question. (shrink)