HKB
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.
INTRODUCTION
In AD 8, when he was fifty years of age, Ovid was abruptly banished from Rome to Tomis, an exile from which he never returned. In his poetry from exile, he gives two reasons for the banishment: the publication of the Ars Amatoria, and an unnamed error (Tr II 207; EP III iii 71-72)[1]. The Ars Amatoria had been published some years previously, being generally dated on the basis of AA I 171-72 to 2 BC or shortly thereafter; compare Tr II 545-46. The error was clearly the real cause of the banishment; what precisely this error was Ovid does not reveal, but it appears from Tr II 103-4 and Tr III v 49-50 to have been the witnessing of some action that was embarrassing to the imperial family. Beyond this nothing is known, for Ovid was careful to avoid compounding his original mistake by mentioning what it consisted of.
[Footnote 1: The evidence for Ovid's error and the many theories advanced to explain it are gathered and fully discussed in J. C. Thibault's The Mystery of Ovid's Exile (Berkeley: 1964).]