The Last Poems of Ovid

by Ovid

24. ET MARIVS SCRIPTI DEXTER IN OMNE GENVS. For the phrasing compare Tr II 381-82 'omne genus scripti grauitate tragoedia uincit: / haec quoque materiam semper amoris habet' and Tr II 517-18 'an genus hoc scripti faciunt sua pulpita ['stage'] tutum, / quodque licet, mimis scaena licere dedit?'. C's MARIVS SCRIPTOR and B's SCRIPTOR MARIVS were no doubt induced by the hyperbaton of scripti ... genus.

Marius is not otherwise known.

25. TRINACRIVSQVE ... AVCTOR. In view of the following auctor ... Lupus, Trinacrius should be taken as a proper name, and not as an adjective. The adjectival form of the name is, however, suspicious, and may be a corruption far removed from what Ovid wrote.

25. SVAE seems strange, and is probably corrupt. Wheeler translated 'Trinacrius who wrote of the Perseid he knew so well', while André ignored suae altogether: 'l'auteur trinacrien de la "Perséide"'.

25-26. AVCTOR / TANTALIDAE REDVCIS TYNDARIDOSQVE LVPVS. Lupus (otherwise unknown) apparently wrote of the return of Menelaus and Helen to Sparta.

Tantalides is used only here of Menelaus. Elsewhere in Latin verse it is used of Agamemnon, Atreus, and Pelops: see OLD Tantalides. Ovid is here using the diction of high poetry.

27. ET QVI MAEONIAM PHAEACIDA VERTIT. Tuticanus; his translation of the Phaeacian episode of the Odyssey is mentioned at xii 27-28. As that poem explains, his name could not be used in elegiac verse: hence the periphrasis in this passage.

27. ET VNE HLB² ET VNE M^2c ET VNA IT ET VNI B¹C IN ANGVEM F. Vne was liable to corruption because of the hyperbaton with Rufe in the next line, and because of the rarity of the vocative of unus. For unus in the sense 'unique, outstanding', compare Catullus XXXVII 17 'tu praeter omnes une de capillatis' ('you outstanding member of the long-haired set'—Quinn) and Prop II iii 29 'gloria Romanis una es tu nata puellis'.

27-28. VNE / PINDARICAE FIDICEN TV QVOQVE, RVFE, LYRAE. An imitation of Hor Carm IV iii 21-23 'totum muneris hoc tui est / quod monstror digito praetereuntium / Romanae fidicen lyrae'.

28. RVFE. Otherwise unknown. André correctly points out that he is unlikely to be the Rufus addressed in EP II xi, 'dont Ovid n'aurait pas manqué alors de vanter le talent poétique'. Bardon (59) mentions that A. Reifferscheid ("Coniect. noua", Ind. lect. Bresl., 1880/81, p. 7) identified this Rufus with the Pindaric poet Titius of Hor Ep I iii 9-10, thereby creating 'le très synthétique Titius Rufus'. But there is nothing very compelling about the identification.