EDITOR'S PREFACE. THE present edition is substantially a reprint of a work entitled Extracts from Tibullus and Ovid,' written some years ago by the late Professor Ramsay, for the use of the Latin class in the University of Glasgow. It was originally printed privately at his own expense; and has remained up to this time practically unknown to the scholars and schools of England, and almost unused beyond the limits of this University. Having found the work invaluable as a text-book for my junior class, combining as it does accurate scholarship with vigorous, graphic representations of ancient mythology and history, of ancient life and literature, I suggested to the Delegates of the Oxford Press that it would be a fitting work to insert in their new series. The book in its original form being somewhat too bulky, it was thought advisable to omit altogether the selections from Tibullus-which might have interfered with a selection from the minor Roman poets shortly to be issued in the same series-and to curtail the notes in the remaining portion of the book where possible. Such curtailment has been effected almost entirely by the omission of original passages from classical authors, which had been quoted in extenso in the original work and which are merely referred to in the present edition; and as at the same time a number of notes have been inserted which originally appeared in illustration of the extracts from Tibullus, the result is that the notes of the present volume include the whole of the notes to the Ovid, and in an enriched rather than an impoverished form. The only decided alteration I have ventured to make is in the matter of orthography, as to the true principles of which so much progress has been made by modern scholars. In accordance with the now generally received conclusions of the best authorities, I have written uniformly caelum, caelestis, caerulens, cetera, fenus, fetus, femina, fenum, maeror, maestus, baedus, nequiquam, quicquam, umquam, numquam, tamquam, etc., inserted the pin such forms as sumptus, ademptus, etc., and made a few other unimportant changes of a similar character. With regard to the difficult question of assimilation I have left the orthography as it stood. With these exceptions the work remains, both in form and substance, absolutely unchanged. GEORGE G. RAMSAY. GLASGOW COLLEGE, May 2, 1868. |
