The Last Poems of Ovid | Page 3

that the edition can be
read on any computer, large or small, new or old. However, this
portability comes at a price. The ISO 8859-1 ASCII character set does
not include the Greek alphabet, nor does it include certain special
characters which form part of this edition.
Therefore, the Text version of this edition presents Greek passages
transliterated into the Latin alphabet. Similarly, in the textual apparatus
any capital letter occurring in the report of a manuscript should be
considered to be that letter in lower case, with a macron (dash) above.
When the textual apparatus reports a manuscript correction where the
original reading is no longer legible, the HTML version underlines the
corrected letters, but the Text version uses capitalization. For example,
the Text version reports "facTisque _B2c_" at iii 25: a later hand in
_B_ has erased the original fourth letter, and has replaced it with "t".
In the commentary, when metre is being discussed and a Latin word is
quoted, any vowel in that word which is capitalized is long, and any
vowel which is not capitalized is short. I have occasionally pointed out
explicitly that a word is metrically inconvenient because it has a series
of short vowels: in the HTML edition, because the actual letters are
marked short, these statements will appear to be redundant.
In the Latin text, the start and end of passages which are deeply corrupt
and therefore difficult to correct are indicated by an asterisk, instead of

the usual dagger (obelus).
Finally, in the critical apparatus, 'æ' is used where a manuscript has 'e'
with a cedilla.
Enhancements made: the indices
In order to make the digital edition as useful as possible, I have added
this preface, a full table of contents, and two indices.
The first index (starting on page 477) is an index of _topics discussed_.
It is a selective rather than an exhaustive index for the following two
reasons:
(1) A commentary is already in effect indexed by the text it is linked to.
If, for instance, readers wish to find what the commentary has to say
about a certain passage, all they need do is turn to the part of the
commentary dealing with that passage.
(2) A digital edition can be searched online very quickly and easily. A
reader wishing to find any mention of the eminent Dutch textual critic
Nicolaus Heinsius could find every mention of Heinsius in the edition
simply by using "Heinsius" as a search argument.
However, some of the discussions in the commentary do not have an
obvious link to the text, nor would they necessarily be found quickly by
an electronic search. An example would be the discussion of "Simple
verbs used for compound ones" at page 281.
Also, there were some parts of the introduction and commentary which
I wanted to highlight to the reader as being of possible interest:
including references to these in the index would serve this purpose.
For similar reasons, I have included (starting on page 489) an index of
textual emendations first proposed in this edition. Some of these
emendations involve works other than _Ex Ponto_ IV, and authors
other than Ovid. The index of textual emendations makes these
corrections easy to find.

The debt I owe to others
I was able to create this edition only because of the help that I have
received over the years from others.
My basic training in the classical languages took place at the University
of British Columbia, where I completed my B.A. in 1974, and my M.A.
in 1977. It is impossible to repay the debt I owe to every single member
of the Classics Department at that time.
Professor Charles Murgia of the University of California (Berkeley)
initiated me into the mysteries of Latin palaeography and textual
criticism.
I created this edition while a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of
Classics at the University of Toronto. I owe an enormous debt of
gratitude to Professor Richard Tarrant, who encouraged me to
undertake the edition, posed many excellent questions, and offered
many excellent suggestions.
I owe a similar debt to Professor Alexander Dalzell, Professor Elaine
Fantham, Professor J. N. Grant, and Professor C. P. Jones, all of them
members of the Graduate Department of Classics at the University of
Toronto when I was creating the edition.
I have known Rob Morrow for twenty-one years, and he has touched
every aspect of my life. The study of Latin poetry is a field of
endeavour far removed from his usual interests: but even here he has
made an important contribution in the work he did in scanning the
original typescript, and in his continuing encouragement and support
during the months I worked on creating this digital edition. It is to him,
with deep affection and gratitude, that I dedicate this edition.