The intended audience of this edition
This edition is intended to serve as a guide to the poems for intermediate and advanced students of Latin poetry. However, I have deliberately made it as straightforward as possible, and my hope is that even a beginning student of Latin poetry embarking on the study of these poems will find the commentary helpful.
This edition is also directed towards present and future Latin textual critics.
My expectation when starting my research for this edition was that I would be presenting a text that differed little from that to be found in current editions. However, I made two discoveries during my research into the text.
The first discovery was that many important textual corrections generally accepted in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had been suppressed by editors in the course of the nineteenth century. I have restored many of these readings to the text, and others will be found in the textual apparatus.
The second discovery was that there was a surprisingly large number of passages which appeared to be corrupt and for which it was possible to suggest corrections. Given the long history of Latin textual criticism, and Ovid's central position in Roman literary history, it was surprising to find that so much remained to be done. Yet such was the case.
Nothing is more certain than that this book of poems as well as the three earlier books of the Ex Ponto represent an outstanding opportunity for future editors and commentators to contribute to the progress of Latin scholarship.