Nipperdey proposed that Ovid's Gracchus was the Sempronius Gracchus implicated in the disgrace of Julia (Vel Pat II 100 5); see Syme HO 196 and Furneaux on Tac Ann I 53 4. The identification is however far from certain.
32. CALLIMACHI PROCVLVS MOLLE TENERET ITER. Proculus is otherwise unknown. Ehwald suggested (JAW 43 [1885] 141) that he was a dramatic poet like Varius and Gracchus, citing a mention of the 'σατυρικὰ δράματα, τραγῳδίαι, κωμῳδίαι' of Callimachus in the Souda. But Callimachus' primary reputation was hardly that of a tragedian; and molle ... iter must be a reference to Aetia 25-28: 'καὶ τόδ' ἄνωγα, τὰ μὴ πατέουσιν ἅμαξαι / τὰ στειβειν, ἑτέρων δ' ἴχνια μὴ καθ' ὁμά / [Hunt: δίφρον ἐλ]ᾷν μηδ' οἷμον ἀνὰ πλατύν, ἀλλὰ κελεύθους / [Pfeiffer: ἀτρίπτο]υς, εἰ καὶ στεινοτέρην ἐλάσεις'.
For mollis used specifically of elegy (the Aetia were in elegiac verse), see EP III iv 85 and Prop I vii 19 (cited by André); for the word in an overtly Callimachean context, see Prop III i 19 'mollia, Pegasides, date uestro serta poetae'.
Tenere here has the sense 'keep to', as at Met II 79 'ut ... uiam teneas' and Q Cic (?) Pet 55 'perge tenere istam uiam quam institisti [Gruterus: instituisti codd]'; Professor R. J. Tarrant rightly sees a suggestion of conscious artistic preference, and a faint allusion to the places where Augustan poets renounce the attractions of higher poetry.
33. TITYRON ANTIQVAS PASSERQVE REDIRET AD HERBAS B1C. For the many variants and emendations proposed, see the apparatus.
Housman has offered a defence of B and C's version of this line (937-39). He accepted Riese's printing of Passer as a proper name ('M. Petronius Passer' is mentioned at Varro RR III 2 2), and took the passage to mean 'He wrote bucolics, or, as Ovid puts it, he went back to Tityrus and the pastures of old': the construction is 'cum Passer rediret ad Tityron antiquasque herbas'. In writing the line, Ovid resorted to three devices, 'each of them legitimate, but not perhaps elsewhere assembled in a single verse'. The first is the delay of the preposition ad after Tityron, which it governs; the second is the delay of -que, which properly belongs with antiquas; and the third is the placing of the verb between its two objects. For each of these devices Housman furnishes convincing parallels.
Housman's argument is ingenious and informative, but I do not believe that he is right in defending the line: the accumulation of difficulties is suspicious, and the divergence of the manuscripts is greater here than at any other point in the book. Heinsius wrote of the line, 'haec nec Latina sunt, nec satis intelligo quid sibi uelint'. Like Heinsius, I believe the line to be deeply corrupted and, in the absence of further evidence, impossible to correct.
34. APTAQVE VENANTI GRATTIVS ARMA DARET. Compare Grattius 23 'carmine et arma dabo et uenandi [cod: uenanti et Vlitius] persequar artis'.
34. GRATTIVS. The manuscripts have GRATIVS (CFLT) or GRACIVS (BMHI); and Gratius is what editors both of Ovid and Grattius printed until Buecheler pointed out (RhM 35 [1880] 407) that Grattius is the only form found in inscriptions, and is what is given in the oldest manuscript of Grattius, Vindobonensis 277 (saec viii/ix), which predates the manuscripts of EP IV by at least four hundred years.
35. NAIADAS C. P. Jones NAIADAS A HLI2 NAYADES A MT NAIDAS A BCFI2. Ovid elsewhere invariably uses the dative of agent with amatus (Am I v 12, II viii 12, III ix 55-56, AA II 80, Tr I vi 2, II 400, III i 42, IV x 40).