As Professor Jones notes, following the interpolation of a, the shorter form Naidas was introduced in BCFI1 to restore metre.
35-36. FONTANVS ... CAPELLA. Neither poet is otherwise known.
36. IMPARIBVS ... MODIS. See at 11 imparibus numeris ... uel aequis ([p 453]).
37-38. QVORVM MIHI CVNCTA REFERRE / NOMINA LONGA MORA EST. Similar phrasing at Met XIII 205-6 'longa referre mora est quae consilioque manuque / utiliter feci spatiosi tempore belli' and Fast V 311-12 (Flora speaking) 'longa referre mora est correcta obliuia damnis; / me quoque Romani praeteriere patres'.
39-40. ESSENT ET IVVENES QVORVM, QVOD INEDITA CVRA EST, / APPELLANDORVM NIL MIHI IVRIS ADEST. All editors, misled no doubt by 37, mispunctuate this passage, placing a comma before quorum instead of after: this destroys the gerundive quorum ... appellandorum, leaving the pentameter without a construction.
Williams proposed excising this distich, the reasons being (1) the sudden change from forent to essent, (2) the use of inedita, which is not found elsewhere, (3) the use of cura in a sense, 'written work', that is found only in late Latin, and (4) the prose turn of quorum ... appellandorum. To which it can be replied that (1) forent and essent are equivalent, and metrical convenience alone could justify the change, (2) the use of negatived perfect participles such as inedita, indeclinatus (x 83), and inoblita (xv 37) is a hallmark of Ovid's style, (3) cura is used in this sense by Tacitus (Dial 3 3 & 6 5; Ann III 24 4 & IV 11 5); its earlier use in verse is not surprising, and (4) gerundives were allowed in Latin verse; here, as at ix 12 'salutandi munere functa tui', the hyperbaton compensates for any awkwardness.
39. CVRA unus Thuaneus Heinsii CAVSA BCMFHILT. The same error in some manuscripts at Her I 20 'Tlepolemi leto cura nouata mea est', and Fast I 55 'uindicat Ausonias Iunonis cura Kalendas'; the inverse corruption at Am II xii 17 and Fast IV 368.
In 1894 Owen printed causa. The word can certainly have the meaning he attributed to it ('ὑπόθεσις', 'theme'), as at Prop II i 12 'inuenio causas mille poeta nouas', but this does not seem appropriate to the context here. In his later edition Owen returned to the usual reading.
41. APPELLANDORVM. Appellare used with the same sense (OLD appello2 11) at III vi 6 'appellent ne te carmina nostra rogas'; nōmĭnāre was not available for Ovid's use.
41-44. COTTA ... MAXIME. M. Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus[31] (Forschungen in Ephesos III 112 no. 22; cited by Syme HO 117) was the younger son of Messalla, the patron of Tibullus; he was the recipient of six of the Epistulae ex Ponto (I v, I ix, II iii, II viii, III ii & III v). He is undoubtedly the M. Aurelius or Aurelius Cotta recorded by Tacitus as consul for 20 (Ann III 2 3 & 17 4). He was born much later than his brother Messalinus (the addressee of EP I vii and II ii), who was consul in 3 BC; the chronology is confirmed by a mention of him as praetor in 17 (Inscriptiones Italiae XIII i p. 298; see Syme Ten Studies 52), and by Ovid's testimony that Cotta was born after Ovid had become acquainted with his family (EP II iii 69-80). Cotta was clearly a very close friend of Ovid; this can be seen particularly from EP II iii, in which Ovid recounts how Cotta sent the first letter of comfort after his catastrophe (67-68) and tells how he confessed his error to Cotta. ] Tacitus gives some information on Cotta's public career. In AD 16, in the aftermath of the discovery of Libo's plot against Tiberius, Cotta proposed that Libo's image not be in his descendants' funeral processions (Ann II 32 1). In 20, as consul, he similarly proposed penalties against Piso's family (Ann III 17), and in 27 he is mentioned as attacking Agrippina so as to please Tiberius (Ann V 3). The most interesting mention of him is at Ann VI 5 (AD 32), where Tacitus tells of how Tiberius himself intervened in favour of Cotta after he had been charged with maiestas; the eventual result was that charges were laid against Cotta's chief accuser.