'Scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim,' means no more than we are all scribblers of verse whether real poets or not.'

Translate: Write, ye accomplished poets, the story of my sorrows in place of those of the chieftain of Neritus; for sorrows more have I borne than the chieftain of Neritus.'

1. 59. brevi spatio, abl. of place, 'He wandered about in a confined space.'

in, 'in the course of.'

1. 60. Dulichium was an island south-east of Ithaca, which formed part of the kingdom of Ulysses.

1. 61. sideribus totis distantia, 'separated by entire constellations,' i. e. wholly visible at one place and not seen at the other (abl. of measure, R. 496); for Ovid seems to have looked upon Tomi as far north of Rome, whereas really the stars visible at Tomi would be very nearly the same as those at Rome, since the latitude of Rome is 41° 53′ N., that of Tomi about 43° 46′ N. Cp. iii. 10. 3, ‘Suppositum stellis numquam tangentibus aequor Me sciat in media vivere barbaria.' P. ii. 7. 57, 'proiectus in aequor Arcturum subii Pleiadumque minas.'

(The usual explanation which makes sideribus totis toto caelo' rests on no support).

1. 62. Note (1) the antithesis between this line and 60; he came at last to his own country, I to a barbarous land; (2) the exact balancing of the words by which Dulichias Iliacasque corresponds to the pair of proper adjectives Geticos Sarmaticosque.

1. 63. socios fideles, Homer's èpinpes ¿raîpoi.

1. 64. Cp. P. ii. 7.61, ' recta fides comitum poterat mala nostra levare : Ditata est spoliis perfida turba meis.'

1. 67. Samos (a form found in Il. ii. 634; M. xiii. 711), usually called Same, is the Homeric name for the large island Cephallenia near Ithaca. This line is a reminiscence of Od. xvi. 123, Aovλıxíq te Záμŋ te καὶ ὑληέντι Ζακύνθῳ.

1. 70. inperii deumque locus, a covert flattery of Augustus, who lived on the Palatine, amid the other gods of Rome (1. 69 n.).

1. 71. patiens laborum, Homer's ToλÚTλas.

1. 72. ingenuae, 'weak is my strength and gentle as my birth.' The strength of an 'ingenuus' is contrasted with the robustness of a slave, as in Mart. x. 47. 6 (the happy man is he who has) 'vires ingenuae, salubre corpus, Prudens simplicitas, pares amici.' Cp. what he says of himself Am. ii. 10. 23 'graciles non sunt sine viribus artus;' P. i. 5. 52' Mensque magis gracili corpore nostra valet.'

1. 75. deus, Augustus, 2. 3. So infr. Iovis 78=Augusti.

1. 76. bellatrix, Pallas Athene, who sprang in full armour from the

brain of Zeus, and was the patron of warlike prowess as well as the arts. Cp. Verg. Aen. xi. 483, 'armipotens, belli praeses, Tritonia virgo.' 1. 77. cum, 'whereas.'

1. 79. illius pars maxima ficta laborum, the charge of fictitious invention against Homer is as old as Aristotle, Poet. 25, dedídaɣe dè μάλιστα Ομηρος καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ψευδῆ λέγειν ὡς δεῖ. Cp. Hor. A. P. 151.

1. 82. tamen, ‘and reached though late the land he had sought so long;' tamen is placed last for the sake of emphasis.

EL. VI.

This is the first of the series of epistles, eight in number (T. i. 6; iii. 3; iv. 3; v. 2. 1−44; v. II; v. 14; P. i. 4; iii. 1), addressed to his wife (her birthday is celebrated in v. 5: cp. also i. 3, supr.; iv. 10. 73; Ib. 15), of whom he always speaks in the most affectionate terms. She was a Fabia by birth, a relative of P. Fabius Maximus, one of the poet's most intimate and most powerful friends. P. Fabius Maximus, through his wife Marcia, who was the daughter of L. Marcius Philippus and Atia the younger, was connected with the imperial family; for Atia the younger was the sister of Atia the elder, who by her first husband, C. Octavius, was the mother of Augustus the Emperor; and the two Atiae were the daughters of M. Atius Balbus and Julia, sister of Caesar the Dictator. Consequently Ovid's third wife was one of the ladies about the court, and enjoyed the familiar friendship of Marcia, the two Atiae, and Livia, the Empress herself: see infr. 25; P. i. 2. 139 'Hanc (Ovid's wife) probat et primo dilectam semper ab aevo Est inter comites Marcia censa suas, Inque suis habuit matertera Caesaris (Augustus' aunt, the younger Atia) ante: Quarum iudicio siqua probata, proba est.' See Masson, Vit. Ov. p. 45, ed. Fischer; Graeber, i. ix; Lorentz, p. 24, ff.

SUMMARY.-Wife, than whom was never one dearer, thou hast been my comfort in my trouble, and hast supported my interests at home, helped by a few firm friends, when a cruel and rapacious enemy, relying on my forlorn state, tried to despoil me of my property (1-16). Therefore I offer my poor tribute of thanks to thee, who wilt hold a place among leal wives higher than any of the heroines of old time (17–22). Whether thy own high soul has prompted thee, or whether our great empress, whose society thou dost enjoy, has taught thee by her example how to play the part of a good wife, I know not (23-28). My powers are too weak and feeble rightly to sing thy praises; thou shouldst have

held a foremost place among the great ladies of story. Still if my strains can give thee immortality, thou shalt enjoy it (29–34).

1. 1. Clario poetae. Antimachus of Claros, a small town near Colophon in Ionia (fl. circ. B. C. 405), wrote (1) a Thebais, an epic poem, on account of which he was ranked second among epic poets by Quintilian x. 1. 53; (2) Lyde, a long elegiac poem (Aúdŋ xaì naxv ypáμμa kai ov Tópov, Callim. fr. 441. Blomf.), composed to assuage his grief at the death of his loved wife or mistress Lyde (Plut. cons. Apoll. 106 b.). It contained an account of the misfortunes of all the mythical heroes who had been unfortunate in love, and was valuable as a storehouse of legend, and was probably one of the Greek models chiefly used by Ovid.

1. 2. Coo, Philetas (fl. circ. B. C. 300) of the island Cos, the tutor of Ptolemy Philadelphus II, was with Callimachus the joint inventor of the erotic elegy proper, and these two were the chief models of Propertius, and were much copied by Ovid. Philetas was probably less erudite than Callimachus, and wrote chiefly elegy and epigrams. Bittis (wrongly written Battis in the manuscripts, see Hertzberg, Q. P. p. 207) was the mistress celebrated by Philetas. Cp. P. iii. 1. 57 'nec te nesciri patitur mea pagina, qua non Inferius Coa Bittide nomen habes.' A. A. iii. 329, Rem. 760.

1. 4. non meliore. Ovid was both of a good equestrian family and a distinguished poet, and his wife was justly proud of him: cp. ii. 109. ff.; iv. 3. 55 'tempus ubi est, quo te-nisi non vis illa referri-Et dici, memini, iuvit et esse meam?'

1. 5. ruina, 'thou wert as the beam that propped my falling fortunes.' Mea ruina='ego in ruinoso statu' (supr. 5. 36 n.). Cp. P. ii. 3. 59 'Quaeque ita concussa est, ut iam casura putetur, Restat adhuc umeris fulta ruina tuis.'

1. 6. muneris omne tui est, possessive gen., 'all is the gift of thy liberality;' cp. Hor. Od. iv. 3. 21 'Totum muneris hoc tui est, Quod monstror digito praetereuntium Romanae fidicen lyrae.'

1. 8. See on 5. 17, and cp. Ibis 17, 'Cumque ego quassa meae complectar membra carinae Naufragii tabulas pugnat habere mei.'

1. 9. fame, as in Lucr. iii. 736; Verg. Aen. vi. 421; M. viii. 834, and often in Ovid; and in subsequent poets, Lucan. x. 58; Iuv. xv. 102. This simile of the wolf, and that in P. i. 2. 20' eques... moenia lustrat More lupi clausas circueuntis oves,' are probably reminiscences of Il. x. 485; xvi. 352; Verg. Aen. ix. 59.

1. 11. This comparison of his treacherous enemy, as also the somewhat

similar one in v. 10. 19, 'ut avís, densissimus hostis Advocat et praedam vix bene visus agit,' to a vulture watching for his prey, are probably suggested by the proverbial use of the vulture to describe the greedy parasite; see Plaut. Truc. ii. 3. 16; Trin. i. 2. 64; Most. iii. 12. 47; Catull. lxviii. 124.

On incustoditum see v. 28 n.

1. 12. corpus s. n. p. h.='corpus inhumatum.'

1. 13. nescio quis. Probably the same as the 'ferus et nobis crudelior omnibus hostis' of ii. 77, and the enemy attacked in the Ibis; and in iii. 11, iv. 9, v. 8, and perhaps in P. iv. 3, whom he accuses of having brought about his exile.

male, 'in malignant confidence in my piteous plight.'

1. 14. venturus fuit... si paterere. As a general rule, subj. corresponds to subj., indic. to indic., in the protasis and apodosis of conditional sentences, but verbs expressing possibility, duty, a wish, necessity, fitness, and the periphrastic use of esse with the gerundive or fut. participle, are used regularly with a past tense of the indic., instead of subj., to express that such a thing was possible, right, etc. The indic. is used quite logically, because it states that the possibility, duty, etc., was the case, and has no reference to the acts themselves. Cp. 1. 126. (Instances from the Fasti are given on p. 332 of Mr. Hallam's edition.) Cp. 8. 17 n.

1. 15. virtus. He speaks of both the 'courage' and 'honesty' (probitas) of his wife, also in P. iii. 1. 93, 'Nota tua est probitas testataque tempus in omne: Sit virtus etiam non probitate minor.' Cp. what Cicero, also writing in exile, says to his wife Terentia: Fam. xiv. 1. 1, 'Ex litteris multorum et sermone omnium perfertur ad me incredibilem tuam virtutem et fortitudinem esse teque nec animi neque corporis laboribus defatigari.'

1. 17. probaris='proba iudicaris,' as in P. i. 2. 142, quoted in introd. to this poem. 'And so thou art deemed faithful by a witness true as he is wretched, if so be that this witness carries aught of weight.' Teste, note the omission of ab, which would be required in prose. Hic is deictic, and means himself.

1. 19. prior, 'superior to' (a post-Ciceronian usage), corresponds to secunda, 'inferior to,' in 22. The faithful wife of Hector is Andromache: see Il. vi. 429; T. iv. 3. 29.

1. 20. Laodamia was the wife of Protesilaus, king of Phylace and the neighbouring towns. Leaving his wife behind him, he went to the Trojan War, and was killed first of all the Greeks, on leaping from his ship to shore (2. 403, hence Ausonius, Epigr. 20. 5, derives his name from πρŵτos + ¿λéσ0α). H. xiii., of doubtful authenticity, is a letter

from Laodamia to Protesilaus; see also T. v. 5. 57. The legend is beautifully treated in Wordsworth's Laodamia.

1. 21. M. vatem, 'Homer for your bard;' see on 1. 47.

1. 22. Penelope was the faithful wife of Ulysses, whose constancy to her husband during the ten years of the Trojan War, and the ensuing ten years of his wanderings, is celebrated in the Odyssey. Cp. 2. 375, 'Quid Odyssea est nisi femina propter amorem, Dum vir abest, multis una petita viris?' Cp. v. 5. 51. H. 1. is a letter from Penelope to Ulysses.

1. 23. 'Whether thou owest this to thyself, schooled in duteousness by no teacher, and thy disposition was assigned thee with thy life's fresh dawn, or whether it is the royal lady, attended by thee through all thy years, that teaches thee to be an example of a good wife.'

princeps (see on i. 33) is here applied with studied adulation to Livia, the wife of Augustus.

nulli is dat. of agent.

1. 28. Cp. iii. 25 n.

11. 29 foll. The usual explanation of these lines is to connect 31, 32. with 29, 30 (making the construction 'ei mihi quod non habent, etc., nostraque ora sunt minora et (quod) si quid fuit ante vigoris occidit'), and to make 33, 34 the apodosis to this protasis (='alioquin tu primum locum inter heroidas haberes')-Alas! that I am too weak to sing you, else you would have held a foremost place.' But this necessitates (1) putting a comma at the end of 30, whereas in Ovid it is rare not to have a considerable break in the sense at the end of the pentameter; (2) supplying alioquin,' or some such word, the omission of which is very harsh.

This difficulty has led Riese and Ehwald to transpose 33, 34, making them follow 22, whilst Schenkl suggests that something has fallen out before 33. [I fancy a better order would be 20, 23-28, 21, 22, 33, 34, 29-32, 35, 36.-H. J. R.]

But it seems more natural, preserving the usual order, (1) not to connect 31, 32 with 29, 30 in construction; (2) not to connect 33, 34 with what precedes, but with what follows in sense. Translate: 'Ay me, that my verses have but puny strength, and my mouth (poet. pl.) is too weak to hymn thy praises! Whatever of vital power too I had erewhile has all been quenched and died away for length of sorrow. Thou wouldst have held a foremost place among the hallowed ladies of old story, thou wouldst have been admired above all for thy soul's graces; still, whatsoever my praises shall avail, thou shalt live for ever in my verse.'

Thus haberes will be apodosis to an easily understood protasis, 'if