Officiosus occurs five times in the Ex Ponto, but only four times in the rest of Ovid's poetry.
9-10. Aristaeus was famous for his beekeeping (Virgil G IV 315-558). Bacchus was the god of wine, and Triptolemus had disseminated the knowledge of grain-farming (Met V 646-61). Alcinous might seem a strange companion to these three, but evidently Homer's description of Alcinous' orchard (Od VII 112-31) made a strong impression on the Latin poets. From Ovid compare Am I x 56 'praebeat Alcinoi poma benignus ager' and Met XIII 719-20 'proxima Phaeacum felicibus obsita pomis / rura petunt', from Propertius III ii 13 'nec mea Phaeacas aequant pomaria siluas', and from Virgil G II 87 'pomaque et Alcinoi siluae' 'the fruit-trees of Alcinous'.
9. BACCHO VINA FALERNA. Heinsius preferred M's BACCHO VINA FALERNO. But the passage he cited in its support, Silius III 369-70 'Tarraco ... uitifera, et Latio tantum cessura Lyaeo' is not in fact parallel: Lyaeo there stands for uino, and the passage means 'Tarraco, rich in vines, conceding priority to Latin wine alone'. Ovid wished to balance the hexameter with the pentameter, and used a standard epithet to fill out the metre.
10. ALCINOO. Note the quadrisyllable ending, and compare EP II ix 41-42 'quis non Antiphaten Laestrygona deuouet? aut quis / munifici mores improbet Alcinoi?'. In his later poetry Ovid shows a steadily increasing willingness to allow his pentameters to end with words other than disyllables. Every pentameter of the amatory poems and the first fifteen Heroides ends in a disyllable. Two quadrisyllabic endings occur in the later books of the Fasti: V 582 fluminibus and VI 660 funeribus. In the first five books of the Tristia there are eight such endings, in the first three books of the Ex Ponto there are seven, while in the fourth book there are no less than fourteen instances of quadrisyllabic endings: nearly as many as in all the rest of Ovid's corpus put together.[18] 'Sermo magis etiam quam illic [sc in the Tristia] ... neglectus est et degenerauit' Riese remarked, but it can reasonably be doubted that a poet of Ovid's facility would break the rule of the disyllabic ending except by choice. A moderation of the rule became general: the author of Her XVI-XXI (whom I do not believe to have been Ovid) allowed pudicitiae (XVI 290), superciliis (XVII 16), and deseruit (XIX 202) (Platnauer 17); a count of pentameters in Martial V shows the proportion of non-disyllabic endings at 20%—the shorter the poem, the more freely they are admitted. Quadrisyllable endings are frequent in the metrically strict Claudian.
Ovid admitted quadrisyllable endings more freely if they were proper names. Of the twenty-one quadrisyllable verse-endings in the Ex Ponto, six involve proper nouns: II ii 76 Dalmatiae, ix 42 Alcinoi, the present passage, IV iii 54 Anticyra, viii 62 Oechalia, and ix 80 Danuuium. Professor E. Fantham points out to me that Ovid follows Propertius' similar practice: 42 of the 166 quadrisyllable pentameter endings in Propertius are proper names (Platnauer 17).
The fifteen other instances in the Ex Ponto of quadrisyllabic pentameter-endings are II ii 6 perlegere, ii 70 imperium, iii 18 articulis, v 26 ingenium, III i 166 aspiciant, IV v 24 officio, vi 6 alterius, vi 14 auxilium, ix 48 utilitas, xiii 28 imperii, xiii 46 ingeniis, xiv 4 inuenies, xiv 18 ingenio, xiv 56 imposuit, and xv 26 auxilium.
For Ovid's use of trisyllabic and pentasyllabic endings, see at ix 26 tegeret ([page 294]) and iii 12 amicitia ([p 181]).
11. FERTILE PECTVS HABES. Compare Tr V xii 37-38 'denique non paruas animo dat gloria uires, / et fecunda facit pectora laudis amor'.
11. INTERQVE HELICONA COLENTES. Poets are also described as being on Parnassus at Tr IV i 50, x 23 & x 120. Helicon is the goal of poets at Hor Ep II i 218 (cited at 36).
12. PROVENIT continues the agricultural metaphor of fertile pectus. For prouenire = 'grow', see AA III 101-2 'ordior a cultu: cultis bene Liber ab uuis / prouenit', Fast IV 617 'largaque prouenit cessatis messis in aruis', and Nux 10; for the metaphorical sense see Am I iii 19-20 'te mihi materiem felicem in carmina praebe— / prouenient causa carmina digna sua' and Her XV 13-14 'nec mihi dispositis quae iungam carmina neruis / proueniunt'.