| Abstract: | "This book aims to meet the long-felt need for a detailed commentary on the third book of Ovid's Amores. Its primary goal is to present readers with the information required for understanding Book 3, its place in the Amores, in Ovid's work more generally, and in the tradition of erotic elegy. It has a particular focus on such matters as Ovid's allusion to and engagement with the works of earlier Roman love poets; the connections between elegies in Book 3 and poems in Books 1 and 2; the reworking of ideas and themes from Amores in Ovid's other erotic works; the verbal texture of Ovid's poetry, particularly his use of rhetoric and wit, and his employment of metrical and verbal patterns; the relationship between Amores and the political and cultural context of Augustan Rome; the elucidation of linguistic difficulties; and the discussion of textual problems, particularly the explanation of my choice of readings in disputed passages. Close engagement with Amores inevitably leads to grappling with textual difficulties. Although I have consulted digital images of the principal manuscripts for Amores 3 (P, S, and Y), the text that I offer is based primarily on printed editions, especially those of Munari, Kenney, Showerman & Goold, McKeown, and Ramirez de Verger. A list of differences from these editions follows the text and translation. I have taken a relatively conservative approach to textual matters. Even though I particularly admire Kenney's edition of Amores, I have not followed him in claiming that 3.5 is inauthentic because (a) it holds its place in the three best and oldest manuscripts and (b) its style is not significantly different from that of Ovid's other elegies. Nor have I divided 3.11. If 3.5 is retained, there is no need to split 3.11 into two poems in order to bring the number of elegies in Book 3 up to the magical number of 15. My translation makes no claim to grace or elegance. It is intended primarily to clarify the surface meaning of the Latin. I have tried to make this edition as inclusive as possible. The overall Introduction and the introductions to individual poems are intended to be comprehensible to anyone with an interest in Latin love poetry and the place of Amores within that tradition. While the Commentary is obviously aimed at readers with a knowledge of Latin, it does not require familiarity with Greek or other languages. On the other hand, I have not thought it necessary to keep reminding readers that Virgil wrote Eclogues (Ecl.), Georgics (G.), and Aeneid (A.) and that Ovid wrote Amores (Am.), Heroides (Her.), Metamorphoses (Met.), and so on. As I argue in the Introduction, I view Amores as a set of performances by different speakers, not all of whom can be identified with the poet or even with the lover of Corinna. For that reason I have labelled the speakers of the various poems in different ways and reserved the word 'Ovid' for the author of the fifteen poems of Book 3 and the poet's other works. I have made extensive use of the Packard Humanities Institute's database of Classical Latin Texts. My claims concerning the occurrence or non-occurrence of words and phrases in Latin literature are based upon searches of this important resource. Thanks to the internet, I have also been able to use not only some of the oldest printed texts of Amores (including Naugerius' Aldine edition [1515]), but also some of the earliest commentaries (including those of the Venetian scholar Marius Niger [Domenico Mario Negri; 1518]) and the German humanist Micyllus [Jacob Moltzer; 1549]), as well as the more famous works of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century editors Nicolaus Heinsius and Petrus Burmannus (Pieter Burman). When discussing textual matters, I have made a point of giving precise references to their works and those of other textual critics"-- |
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