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A NOTE ON OVID, HEROIDES 6.117–18
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2019
Extract
At Her. 6.113–18 Hypsipyle lays out for Jason the advantages to be gained by marrying her: the prestige of her noble and even divine family, and the fertile island of Lemnos, which will come as her dowry. She then adds the fact that she is pregnant with twins (6.119–22); this thought introduces a new section, which extends until line 130.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 2019
Footnotes
I wish to thank Professor Sergio Casali for the idea of writing this note, as well as for his constant help. I also thank Professors Caroline Cheung, Joseph Farrell, Peter Knox, Gianpiero Rosati and Fabio Stok, and my friends Bernardo Berruecos Frank, Alessia Di Marco, Andrew Horne and Scott Weiss, as well as CQ’s anonymous reader, for their many useful comments and suggestions.
References
1 Dörrie, H., P. Ovidii Nasonis Epistulae Heroidum (Berlin and New York, 1971)Google Scholar.
2 Naugerius, A., Annotationes in Omnia Ouidii opera (Venice, 1516)Google Scholar, ad loc.
3 The most successful among the various transmitted stopgaps has been res tales: Hypsipyle, saying ‘I can count me too among such things’, i.e. ‘inter res ingeniosas colenti’, ‘among the fertile things’, would be anticipating the content of the next section (in itself an unusual procedure); see Gronovius, J.F., Obseruationum liber nouus (Deventer, 1652), 249Google Scholar: ‘res tales. nempe foecundas et ingeniosas colenti: quas inter se merito censeri iubet Hypsipyle, quippe quae prolem gemellam ex concubitu Jasonis uno partu ediderat’; and so many editors and commentators, including, for example, Heusinger, J.F., P. Ovidi Nasonis Heroides et A. Sabini epistolae (Braunschweig, 1786)Google Scholar; van Lennep, D.J., P. Ovidi Nasonis Heroidum epistularum liber et A. Sabini epistulae (Amsterdam, 1809)Google Scholar; and Ehwald, R., P. Ovidius Naso, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1888)Google Scholar; also Shuckburgh, E.S., P. Ovidii Nasonis Epistulae XIII (London, 1879)Google Scholar, who prints dotales, but in his note finds that ‘res tales has some point’: ‘me too you may count as fertile’. Others have printed res tales but offered a different interpretation: the ‘things’ among which Hypsipyle wants to be counted would be the dowry, the nobility and the famous names themselves; see Crescentinas, Hubertinus Clericus, In Nasonis Heroidas Commentum (Casale Monferrato, 1481)Google Scholar: ‘res tales […] id est inter nobilitatem, et dotem, et similia’, and so, for example, Amar, J.A., P. Ovidius Naso, vol. 1 (Paris, 1820)Google Scholar; Jahn, J.C., P. Ovidii Nasonis quae supersunt opera omnia, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1828)Google Scholar; Loers, V., P. Ovidii Nasonis et A. Sabini epistulae (Cologne, 1829)Google Scholar; and more recently Moya del Baño, F., Ovidio: Heroidas (Madrid, 1986)Google Scholar.
4 N. Heinsius, in the section entitled ‘Nicolai Heinsii D. F. Notae in Heroidas P. Ovidii Nasonis’ of his undated volume of notes to the first volume of his edition of Ovid (Amsterdam, 1658), 48–9: quot tales …! (‘Hoc vult, paucas esse quae secum comparari possint’); Faber, T., T. Lucretii Cari De rerum natura libri sex (Cambridge, 1675), 399Google Scholar: iam matres; Withof, J.H., Oratio de immodico allegandi inter eruditos abusu. Accedit insignium in Ovidii Nasonis Heroidum epistolas emendationum decas (Duisburg, 1738), 25Google Scholar: quod recolas; and H. Lindemann, Ovids Werke, vol. 6 (Leipzig, 1867): opes tales.
5 See Dörrie, H., ‘Untersuchungen zur Überlieferungsgeschichte von Ovids Epistulae Heroidum. Teil I’, NAWG 5 (1960), 113–230Google Scholar, at 129.
6 Rosati, G., Ovidio: Lettere di eroine (Milan, 1989)Google Scholar. Cf. also in, M. PrévostOvide: Héroïdes. Texte établi par H. Bornecque et traduit par M. Prévost (Paris, 1928)Google Scholar: ‘me ranger parmi les femmes bien dotées’.
7 Knox, P.E., Ovid: Heroides. Select Epistles (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar. Cf. also, for example, Shuckburgh (n. 3): ‘among those whom your marriage with me will put into your hands’; Palmer, A., P. Ovidii Nasonis Heroides XIV (London, Cambridge and Dublin, 1874)Google Scholar: ‘and my person you may reckon among your slaves acquired by dowry’ (= Palmer, A., P. Ovidii Nasonis Heroides with the Greek Translation of Planudes [Oxford, 1898]Google Scholar); Showerman, G., Ovid: Heroides and Amores (Cambridge, MA and London, 1914)Google Scholar: ‘and me, too, you will possess among the subjects my dowry brings’.
8 Salmasius, C., De modo usurarum liber (Leiden, 1639), 138–9Google Scholar. Salmasius also cites Verg. Aen. 4.103–4 liceat Phrygio seruire marito | dotalisque tuae Tyrios permittere dextrae as another example of the supposedly mistaken attribution of a dowry to a woman—not, however, strictly as an argument in favour of reading dotales in Ovid.
9 This is indeed the text most commonly found in the first printed editions of the Heroides. Micyllus, , in P. Ovidii Nasonis Poetae Sulmonensis Opera quae vocantur amatoria, cum doctorum virorum commentariis … His accedunt Iacobi Micylli annotationes … (Basel, 1549), 72Google Scholar is the only commentator who explicitly defends it: ‘Quae lectio [res tales], ut quidem plenior est, ita tamen simplicior Aldina uidetur: quam et nos secuti sumus, ut particula Iam ἐπιλογικῶς, ut ita dicam, sumatur. Q.d. Cum ea sit nobilitas meorum, tanta dos mea, possis non immerito me quoque ob, vel inter talia ac tanta te digna esse existimare, etc.’; contra, see Bachet de Méziriac, C.-G., Commentaire sur les epistres d'Ovide (Bourg-en-Bresse, 1626), 635Google Scholar: ‘où il est évident que le pentamètre est dépravé, et l'explication qu'en donne Micyllus est si forcée, que je ne daignerais prendre la peine de la réfuter’.
10 I have not found where Salmasius had already advanced his conjecture (‘sic enim eum locum pridem emendavimus’). It might be possible that, when Méziriac (n. 9) says ‘et quelques autres encore [lisent], me quoque dotales’ (proposing, on his part, to read me res dotales inter habere potes, ‘et pour moi tu me pourras prendre comme un augment et un surcroit de ma dot’), he is referring to Salmasius, but this is far from certain, since already Antonio Volsco in his commentary on the Heroides (Venice, 1481) had written: ‘me quoque quod tales, non dotales legendum’ (he goes on: ‘sed quid tales: poteras inquit et me habere: quae digna sum inter meos maiores annumerari’). Clearly, then, the conjecture dotales is much earlier than Salmasius.
11 But, as we have seen, Salmasius discussed his conjecture in his De modo usurarum, and not in his De usuris (Leiden, 1638).
12 Heinsius (n. 4), 49.
13 The same misunderstanding in the apparatus criticus of Palmer (n. 7): ‘Salmasius olim coni. dotales pro dotatas, sed dotalis nunquam idem valet quod dotatus.’
14 Things become more complicated, however, when we read Heinsius's ‘interpretation’ of Salmasius in his note as reproduced in Burman, P.'s edition (Publii Ovidii Nasonis Opera omnia, vol. 1 [Amsterdam, 1727], 83)Google Scholar, where Heinsius's notes are added ‘minimum tertia parte ex eius autographo auctiores’ (Praef. p. 2): ‘Salmasius me quoque dotales inter, pro dotatas, ut res dotales subintelligatur. Hoc sensu. Non tantum Lemnos tibi dotalis erit, sed ego quoque ipsa.’ Apparently something has gone wrong here with the transcription of Heinsius's note, because what follows the explanation ‘dotales …, pro dotatas’ does not seem consistent with it. The ending of Heinsius's note—‘Neque displicet tamen Salmasianum, ut se non tam dotatam, quam dotalem innuat Hypsipyle. Dotalium servorum frequens in jure mentio. Apud Plautum quoque, Apulejum & Claudianum’—is also difficult to understand: ‘I rather like Salmasius’ conjecture, provided that Hypsipyle means that she is dotalis, not dotata’? That is, is Heinsius still thinking of Salmasius's dotales as meaning dotatas?
15 But see Knox (n. 7), who prints lines 115–16 in square brackets.
16 Cf. Ap. Rhod. Argon. 1.827–31 (Hypsipyle to Jason) εἰ δέ κεν αὖθι | ναιετάειν ἐθέλοις καί τοι ἅδοι, ἦ τ’ ἂν ἔπειτα | πατρὸς ἐμεῖο Θόαντος ἔχοις γέρας· οὐδέ σ’ ὀίω | γαῖαν ὀνόσσεσθαι, περὶ γὰρ βαθυλήιος ἄλλων | νήσων Αἰγαίῃ ὅσαι εἰν ἁλὶ ναιετάουσιν, ‘and if you yourself should wish to live here and would find it agreeable, then truly you would have my father Thoas’ position of honor. Nor do I think you will find fault with our land, for it has deeper soil than all the other islands that lie in the Aegean sea’ (transl. Race).
17 So Phyllis at 2.109–14, Briseis at 3.55 quamuis ueniam dotata, Phaedra at 4.163 est mihi dotalis tellus Iouis insula, Crete, Dido at 7.149–50 in dotem … | accipe.
18 Bessone, F., P. Ovidii Nasonis Heroidum Epistula XII: Medea Iasoni (Florence, 1997), 267Google Scholar.
19 While the substantival use of dotalis = seruus dotalis (‘unusual, but not unparalleled’: Knox [n. 7]) would find parallels only in four passages from the same Controuersia of Seneca the Elder (7.6.1, 3, 5, 9), in which the term seruus is easily supplied by the context, dotata for the standard uxor or coniunx dotata is attested at Plaut. Aul. 535 dotatae mactant et malo et damno uiros, Ter. Phorm. 937–9 me indotatis modo | patrocinari fortasse arbitramini: | etiam dotatis soleo, Pompon. Atell. 88 nupsit posterius dotatae uetulae uaricosae uafrae, and Dotata is a title of an Atellana of both Pomponius and Novius; see TLL 5.1.2057.43–6. For Ovid's use of dotata, besides Her. 6.138 quoted above, cf. Her. 3.55–6 scilicet ut, quamuis ueniam dotata, repellar, | et mecum fugias quae tibi dantur opes (with Barchiesi, A., P. Ovidii Nasonis Epistulae Heroidum 1–3 [Florence, 1995]Google Scholar, ad loc.); Am. 2.4.17 siue es docta, places raras dotata per artes; Rem. 565 hic male dotata pauper cum coniuge uiuit; Met. 11.301–2 Chione, quae dotatissima forma | mille procos habuit.
20 P. Ovidii Nasonis Operum Tomus II qui Metamorphoses complectitur, Nicolaus Heinsius, D. F. locis infinitis ex fide scriptorum exemplarium castigavit, & observationes adjecit (Amsterdam, 1659), 439 (‘Addenda aut mutanda notis ad Tomum Primum’). Here Heinsius considers also the possibility of reading hanc [sc. Lemnon] dotales inter habere potes, comparing Her. 4.163 est mihi dotalis tellus Iouis insula, Crete. The same proposals will be found also in Heinsius's note as reproduced in Burman's edition (n. 14).