The Last Poems of Ovid | Page 2

National Library
of Canada.

Had I followed a university teaching career after graduation, I would
undoubtedly have taken the necessary steps to publish the edition, if
only in pursuit of academic promotion. But I instead chose a career in
the software industry, which both removed the external incentive to
publish the edition, and denied me the time that I would have needed to
prepare it for publication.
However, I wished to ensure that future editors and commentators were
aware of the edition and would be able to make use of it. I therefore
decided to publish two short articles drawn from the edition. These
articles were intended to make generally available two textual
conjectures which I considered likely to be correct. But the articles
were also intended to make future editors aware that I had worked on
the text of Ovid, so that they would seek out my unpublished edition.
The first article ("An Intrusive Gloss in Ovid _Ex Ponto_ 4.13")
appeared in _Phoenix_ (vol. 40, p. 322) in 1986: it reported the
restoration of IV xiii 45 discussed at page 408 of the commentary.
_Phoenix_ is published by the Classical Association of Canada, and
since my own training in the classical languages had taken place almost
entirely in Canada, it seemed appropriate that my first publication
should be in a Canadian journal.
To my surprise and pleasure, my short article attracted a critique by
Professor Allan Kershaw ("_Ex Ponto_ 4.13: A Reply", _Phoenix_, vol.
42, p. 176), followed by a learned defense of my conjecture by
Professor James Butrica ("Taking Enemies for Chains: Ovid _Ex
Ponto_ 4.13.45 Again", _Phoenix_, vol. 43, pp. 258-59).
Four years later, I published a second article ("A Palaeographical
Corruption in Ovid, _Ex Ponto_ 4.6"), which appeared in the May 1990
issue of the _Classical Quarterly_ (pp. 283-84). This article reported
the restoration of IV vi 38 discussed at pages 240-41 of the
commentary. I selected the _Classical Quarterly_ because of its
prominence within the world of classical scholarship, and in particular
because of its close association with the modern history of Latin textual
criticism: it was in the _Classical Quarterly_ that many of the learned
articles of A. E. Housman first appeared.

My hope had been that these two articles would serve as a signpost that
would lead editors to my edition. The publication of J. A. Richmond's
Teubner edition of the _Ex Ponto_ in 1990 proved that this plan was
inadequate. Professor Richmond had indeed discovered the existence of
my edition: it received a prominent and flattering mention at the end of
his preface. However, he stated that he received the microfilm of the
edition too late for use in his edition!
In his review of Richmond's Teubner edition in the _Classical Review_
(n.s. 42, 2 [1992], pp. 305-06), Professor James Butrica highlighted a
number of proposed emendations from my edition.
It had become clear there was considerable outside interest in the work
that I had done, and that simply having a copy of an unpublished
edition on deposit at the National Library of Canada was not a
sufficient means of making the edition available to the public, so over
the years that followed I gave some consideration to how I might
publish the edition so that it would be conveniently available to
students of Latin poetry.
Early in 2006, I was working as a volunteer proofreader for the Project
Gutenberg digital library: I noticed that the Project Gutenberg library
included some public domain classical editions comparable in scope to
my own. Prompted by this, I decided that I would publish my edition
online in order to make it instantly accessible free of charge to anyone
wishing to use it. This seemed in every way preferable to seeking out a
university press, going through the time-consuming process of seeking
the necessary grants to subsidize publication, in order to produce a
printed book so expensive that no student and not many libraries could
afford to purchase a copy.
Nature of this edition
In essence, this is a corrected version of the original typescript. Typing
errors have been corrected, and minor errors have been set right.
All statements made and conjectures proposed should be considered to
have been made in 1985.

The HTML and Text versions of this edition
This digital edition is being made available in two versions.
The _HTML version_ takes advantage of the Unicode character set to
present Greek passages using the Greek alphabet, and to present certain
other special characters, such as the macron. It also offers hyperlinks
from the table of contents and from the indices to the relevant sections
of the edition.
Popular and useful as HTML is, it does not offer the universality of
ASCII text. Essentially every computer can display plain ASCII text
correctly. The _Text version_ is presented so