Book XIII of Ovid’s ›Metamorphoses‹: A Textual Commentary

540 Pages·2018·2.32 MB·English

by  Luis Rivero García

Luis Rivero García
Book XIII of Ovid’s Metamorphoses
A Textual Commentary
Sammlung
wissenschaftlicher Commentare
Luis Rivero García
Book XIII of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
A Textual Commentary
De Gruyter
ISBN 978-3-11-061010-9
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-061249-3
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-061153-3
ISSN 1864-3426
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rivero García, Luis, author.
Title: Book XIII of Ovid's Metamorphoses : a textual commentary / Luis Rivero
García.
Description: Berlin : De Gruyter, 2018. | Series: Sammlung wissenschaftlicher
Commentare
Identifiers: LCCN 2018023828 (print) | LCCN 2018026378 (ebook) | ISBN
9783110612493 (electronic Portable Document Format (pdf) | ISBN
9783110610109 (print : alk. paper) | ISBN 9783110612493 (e-book pdf) |
ISBN 9783110611533 (e-book epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Ovid, 43 B.C.-17 A.D. or 18 A.D. Metamorphoses. Liber
13--Commentaries.
Classification: LCC PA6519.M9 (ebook) | LCC PA6519.M9 R54 2018 (print) | DDC
873/.01--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018023828
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet
at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
www.degruyter.com
Acknowledgements
The present volume was conceived over a decade ago and has taken shape in
different places and with the collaboration of numerous individuals and insti-
tutions. To begin with the latter, the book owes a great deal to the support
of the University of Huelva, which harbours the projects of the Nicolaus
Heinsius Research Group, within which Prof. Antonio Ramírez de Verger
made his proposal to compile all the information possible on the transmis-
sion of the text of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and make it available to the inter-
national community. With this book we bring that idea to partial fruition, to
be accompanied by my colleagues’ studies on other books of Ovid’s poem.
For this ambitious task we have also enjoyed the institutional support of
several Research Projects of Excellence: “OVIDIANA: Comentario críti-
co-textual y edición del texto de las Metamorfosis” (FFI2008-01843) and
“The Metamorphoses of Ovid: 35 Years of Research (1980–2014). With an
Appendix on Manuscripts and Editions (s. IX-XXI)” (FFI2013-42529), both
financed by the Spanish government with the aid of FEDER funds during the
years 2009–2018; “Las Metamorfosis de Ovidio: edición crítica, traducción y
comentario” (HUM-1019) and “Edición crítica y comentario textual de las
Metamorfosis y Opera Minora de Ovidio” (HUM-4534), both financed by
the regional government of Andalucía during the years 2006–2014. These
projects have guaranteed the efficient teamwork required to locate and
acquire documents (mainly manuscripts, editions and critical articles), and
have enabled us to establish common working lines and methods for the pro-
duction of the commentaries, as well as to train new researchers by means of
four doctoral theses read in this period (on Books III, VII, X and XI).
But our work would have been less efficient had we not been able to count
on the support of Huelva University Library and its staff, ever attentive to
our needs and promptly overseeing the location and acquisition of the do -
cuments essential to our research tasks. I would like to express my sincere
gratitude to all of them, and in particular to Dª Aurora Romero, who from
the Interlibrary Loan Service attended to our constant and often problematic
requests with patience, thoughtfulness and professional discipline.
However, my work has not only been carried out at home but, thanks again
to the financial support of different institutions, I have been given access to
the wealth of bibliographical resources of several European libraries, whose
staff I would also like to thank for enabling me to make the most of my
research stays: the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris; the Univer-
siteitsbibliotheek of Leiden; the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich; the
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110612493-201
VI Acknowledgements
Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna; the libraries of the Deutsches Archäeo-
logisches Institut, the École Française and the Nazionale Centrale in Rome;
the Biblioteca Palatina di Parma; the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Flo-
rence; the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli.
Special thanks, however, are due to Dra. Paola Errani, of the Biblioteca
Malatestiana di Cesena, who along with the rest of her team greatly facili-
tated my research into the fragmentum Caesenas in February 2014. Also to
Dr. Marco Buonocore, on whose learned help I have been able to count in
each of my consultations and who made my work in the Biblioteca Apos-
tolica Vaticana so much easier in the first half of 2015. And, finally, to Dra.
Denise Gavio and all the staff of one of my favourite study places: the Amer-
ican Academy in Rome, in whose main building on the Gianicolo a consider-
able part of this commentary was produced, in both March-September 2008
and March-June 2015, thanks to scholarships from the Spanish government.
And, returning home, to the people to whom I am most greatly indebted:
my colleagues in the Departamento de Filología and the Centro de Inves-
tigación en Patrimonio Histórico, Cultural y Natural (CIPHCN) of the
University of Huelva, ever ready to assist when I have needed their help,
and in particular to my colleagues in the Nicolaus Heinsius Research Group,
without whom I now feel almost incapable of working. I would like to
acknowledge the permanent availability, whether in person or at a distance,
of doctors Ramírez de Verger, Estévez Sola, Bellido Díaz, Díez Reboso,
Suárez del Río, Fàbregas Salis and Fernández Valverde, and to this list I must
add the name of the sadly departed Georg Luck. The constant exchange of
information and suggestions with all of them has enriched each and every
one of the pages of this book. In particular, I would like to thank Professor
Bellido Díaz for having read the first version of the book and for his percep-
tive corrections, and Professors Ramírez de Verger and Estévez Sola for their
willingness to take over my teaching tasks so that I could enjoy one year’s
research leave during the academic year 2014–2015.
I would also like to thank J.J. Zoltowski for his help with the English
translation of the book. Finally, I would like to offer public recognition of
my gratitude to the publisher Walter de Gruyter for bringing this volume to
the hands of our readers.
I cannot but finish these acknowledgements without mentioning all those
who with their understanding and patience – and no less with their proud
support – have made it possible for me to devote endless hours to the scru-
tiny of manuscripts and the analysis of these verses of Ovid, in short, to our
famous nugae philologicae: To Salud and Luis, mea uita; to my mother, sister
and brothers, who were always at hand; to my father, who did not live to
see this book in print but is present in every word; to my friends, gaudium
meum, freely chosen from those who have chanced to cross my path.
Huelva-Sevilla-Extremadura, March 2018.
Contents
Acknowledgements ........................................... V
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The manuscript transmission of the text ........................ 2
The editors of the text ....................................... 9
Manuscripts used ........................................... 13
Group Γ (ss. IX-XII1) ....................................... 13
Group Δ (ss. XII2-XIII1) ..................................... 14
Group Θ (s. XIII2) .......................................... 17
Group Σ (s. XIV) ........................................... 19
Group Φ (s. XV-XVI) ....................................... 20
Group Ψ (excerpta) ......................................... 21
Editions and commentaries used ............................... 22
The codices of N. Heinsius ................................... 30
Bibliography ................................................. 31
Abbreviations .............................................. 31
Titles cited ................................................. 31
Abbreuiationes hoc in opere usitatae ........................... 48
Commentary ................................................. 51
Index of notable textual phenomena .............................. 413
Appendix critica .............................................. 417

Introduction
The essential objective of Philology is to establish a text for subsequent inter-
nal and external analysis. This critical-textual commentary on Book XIII of
Ovid’s Metamorphoses is presented as a basic tool for this primary purpose.
The aim is for the specialist reader to be able to find here all the textual infor-
mation generated by each passage from the earliest manuscripts transmitting,
in whole or in part, this book of Ovid’s opus magnum, without ignoring the
data provided since Ovid’s own time by the evidence of the indirect tradition.
Also included here is information on the way in which editors and critics
have interpreted each passage from the 15th century down to the present.
Finally, this volume does not hold back from entering the fray in an attempt
to make its own modest contribution to the fixing of the text at its more
obscure points. Consequently, the commentary on each section is generally
accompanied by a reasoned stance adopted by the author of these pages in
relation to the textual obstacle under discussion.1
The text of Ovid’s Metamorphoses has been preserved for us in around 570
manuscripts dated between the 9th and 16th centuries and has been the subject
of more than 500 editions and reprints since the appearance in 1471 of the
editiones principes of Bologna and Rome.2 To these daunting figures must be
added the vast number of critical-textual studies with which scholars from
the Renaissance down to our own days have attempted to shed light on the
1 The general structure of the commentary will be as follows: 1) a portion of the Latin
text as proposed by me; 2) the textual information (following the format of the apparatus
criticus of a critical edition) concerning only the most relevant points under discussion;
3) critical-textual commentary on the passage. For all additional textual information
about the passage, the reader will be referred to the “Appendix critica”. In both the appa-
ratus and the appendix mss. are listed alphabetically and grouped by period (see below),
followed by chronological lists of editors and critics. Whenever I refer to a ‘common’
(or ‘frequent’ etc.) textual phenomenon, the reader is invited to consult the “Index of
notable textual phenomena”.
2 For the complete list of manuscripts I refer the reader to the study by Estévez 2013.
Working from the principal previous studies (basically those of Munari 1957, 1965, 1970
and Coulson 1988, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996), he updates and enhances the catalogue of
witnesses. For an overview of the editions of the Metamorphoses I also recommend,
as a recent and all-embracing study, that of Ramírez de Verger 2016. Also useful are
the syntheses by Díez (2014, xiii-xxiii), Suárez (2015, xiii-xxii) and Fàbregas (2016,
xv-lx).
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110612493-001
2 Introduction
numerous passages of the Ovidian epic which continue to present difficulties
or signs of error in transmission.3
The manuscript transmission of the text
In order to organize this huge body of manuscript material more manageably
we have grouped the witnesses according to chronological and typological
criteria.4 The first group is formed by the fragmenta antiquissima, five in
all, though none of them contain text from book XIII. However, ll. 1–403
are contained in the fragmentum Caesenas (Cs), which Tarrant (2004, ix)
reported as being aetatis incertae, whereas I have been able to demonstrate
(Rivero 2016) that this fragment now occupies ff. 65–102 of the ms. Caesen.
S.I.5 (Cs2, s. XIII2) and that it was copied by a hand from the end of the 12th
century or the first half of the 13th.
The second group (Γ) comprises the 25 mss. dated between the 11th century
and first half of the 12th, only 13 of which contain the text of book XIII
(AGfL3Lr2LuMM2NP2S2TV2V3). I have collated the text in its entirety for
all of them, from a digitized copy in all cases but also from the originals in the
case of mss. MM2NP2TV2V3.5
Group Δ consists of the 87 mss. dated between c. 1150 and c. 1250. Only
56 of these contain the text of book XIII, which I have again collated fully in
all cases,6 with the exception of three, to which the owners have not allowed
us access.7
Some 80 mss. in group Θ, i. e. those dating from the second half of the 13th
c., contain our text. In the present commentary I offer the total or partial evi-
dence of 418 as well as that of another 21 mss. dating from the 14th c. (group
3 Those which affect the text of book XIII are dealt with in the present commentary. A
specific list of critical studies of the complete text of the Metamorphoses is planned for
the Bibliography currently being prepared for Lustrum: “The Metamorphoses of Ovid:
35 Years of Research (1980–2014). With an Appendix on Manuscripts and Editions (s.
IX-XXI)”. For a recent overview with interesting second thoughts on the task of editing
this poem, see Tarrant 2018.
4 By “we” I refer to the Research Team at the Universidad de Huelva. This listing is avail-
able at http://www.uhu.es/proyectovidio/pdf/cronológico.pdf
5 In the case of S2 there is now an excellent-quality image available at http://www.e-codi-
ces.unifr.ch/en/list/one/csg/0866. We now also have a magnificent reproduction of N at
https://www.wdl.org/en/item/4524/
6 Within this group I have had the opportunity to read the original copy of CsLdMo-
P3P4PrT7V8, and Dr. Díez has checked for me a number of readings of mss. Lr3Lr4.
7 The codices in question are: Abredoniensis Bibl. Univ. 165 (C2.7.63), s. XIII1 (Ad), which
we have been unable to obtain from the holding library; and the Phillipici 1038 (s. XII/
XIII; Ph) and 6912 (c. 1250; Ph3), now in private hands and equally inaccessible.
8 From the original document in the cases of Cs2Ld6Mo3P8P10. Whenever the text of a
ms. has not been collated completely or directly, this will be made clear in the ms. listing.
(infra).