Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-2dmjx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-08T22:18:07.286Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A NOTE ON OVID, HEROIDES 6.117–18

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2019

Baruch Martínez Zepeda
Baruch Martínez Zepeda*
Affiliation:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México / University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’
*
baruch.martinez@hotmail.com
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , December 2019 , pp. 764 - 768
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2019

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. Here, following Dörrie's text and apparatus criticus,Footnote 1 is the central passage (6.113–20):

si te nobilitas generosaque nomina tangunt:
en ego Minoo nata Thoante feror.
Bacchus auus: Bacchi coniunx redimita corona   115
praeradiat stellis signa minora suis.
dos tibi Lemnos erit, terra ingeniosa colenti;
me quoque dotales inter habere potes.
nunc etiam peperi. gratare ambobus, Iason —
dulce mihi grauidae fecerat auctor onus.     120

118 dotales Salmasius, coll. Verg. Aen. 4.104] quod tales Bi D G Gi H(txt) L M Of Pa Pv Sp V; q //// lis P; quid tales Gu; quam tales Ri; res tales E F H(vl) rell.; quot tales N. Heinsius; iam matres Tanaq. Faber; opes tales Lindemann

At line 118 the text is corrupt. Already Andreas Naugerius, the editor of the second Aldine edition (1515–16), expressed his bewilderment with the paradosis: ‘in veteribus quibusdam libris me quoque res tales; in aliis me quoque quod tales. quodnam horum rectius sit, iudicent alii. ego quoquo modo legatur non satis quid sibi Ovidius velit, percipio.’Footnote 2 Some editors have tried to make some sense out of the transmitted text.Footnote 3 But conjecture seems to be the most reasonable solution.

Various conjectures have been advanced.Footnote 4 The most successful among them is dotales, which is usually attributed to Salmasius, and has been adopted by the majority of the most recent editors. With dotales we have only to suppose that in the archetype the syllable do- was illegible; res tales or quid tales are only stopgaps meant to restore the metre and some semblance of meaning.Footnote 5 But what is the exact meaning of the text if we read dotales? If we look at the two most authoritative recent editions of the Heroides, we find in fact two very different interpretations of me quoque dotales inter habere potes: on the one hand, Rosati translates: ‘puoi includere anche me fra le donne fornite di dote’;Footnote 6 on the other hand, Knox translates: ‘You can have me, too, among the dotal slaves’, and explains:

… a novel application of the motif of the seruitium amoris. As a wedding gift to Jason she would offer herself in amorous servitude: dotales serui were common components of the dowry. The correction dotales (MSS res tales) restores Ovidian point to the line. The use of dotalis without an accompanying noun is unusual, but not unparalleled (TLL s.v. 2054.32ff.).Footnote 7

Before we proceed any further, let us step back to see how Salmasius himself interpreted the text as restored by his (see n. 10 below) conjecture dotales. In his De modo usurarum liber, Salmasius cites our passage as representative of Ovid's ignorance of the fact that in the heroic age it was the men and not the women who gave a dowry to their partners.Footnote 8 Salmasius, however, is not satisfied with the vulgate text he was reading and so pauses to propose (or re-propose) an intervention in the text:

[me quoque dotales inter habere potes] sic enim eum locum pridem emendavimus ex veteri scriptura, quae habuit, quod tales, cum sine sensu legatur in vulgatis, me quoque iam tales.Footnote 9 Non solum, inquit, dos tibi erit insula Lemnos, cuius sum regina, sed me quoque non dominae et uxoris poteris habere, sed ancillae loco, et inter dotales ancillas. dotalis servi mentio apud Plautum, et apud Apuleium, et in iure nostro. et res dotales passim quae in dotem dantur.Footnote 10

Salmasius explains the text as Knox will do some centuries later: ‘not only, Hypsipyle says, will you have as a dowry the island of Lemnos, of which I am the queen, but you can have even me not as your mistress and wife but as a servant, and among the dotal servants.’ The reception of Salmasius's conjecture, however, will be hindered by Heinsius's incorrect account of it in the note ad loc. of his 1658 edition of Ovid:

Salmasius libro de UsurisFootnote 11Me quoque dotales inter, ut dotales dixerit Ovidius pro dotatas. Quod legem Latini sermonis ferre pernego. ille contrarium docere nos debuisset.Footnote 12

Heinsius takes Salmasius's dotales as meaning dotatas, and denies that this would be correct Latin. How could Heinsius misunderstand Salmasius’s argument in this way?Footnote 13 It is hard to tell. The most reasonable explanation is that he never actually read Salmasius’s annotation, but reconstructed his argument on the sole basis of the conjecture he knew Salmasius had proposed. We might even suspect that Heinsius was not displeased at damaging the reputation of his ‘enemy’ Salmasius.Footnote 14

But at this point we must face a problem: are Salmasius's emendation and explanation possible in this context? The answer in my view is no, for there is a basic difficulty with Salmasius's explanation for dotales which commentators have not focussed on: namely that it would be grossly inappropriate to the context for Hypsipyle to compare herself to a slave at this point. In lines 113–18, as we have seen, Hypsipyle is boasting the nobility of her family and her personal wealth and power—the things that will fall to Jason if he agrees to be her husband. If he is moved by nobility and eminent names, she is the daughter of Thoas, grandson of Minos (through Ariadne, her mother); her grandfather is Bacchus, who transformed Ariadne and the crown he gave her into a very bright constellation.Footnote 15 If, instead, Jason is moved by wealth and power (we may add), her dowry will be the kingship of the rich island of Lemnos, a land naturally suited to those who cultivate it.Footnote 16 As the climax of this self-aggrandizement, Hypsipyle could not belittle herself by saying ‘you can have me, too, among the dotal slaves’. The very point of Hypsipyle's argument is that she is a noble and powerful figure, who will transfer nobility and power to Jason, her husband; she is no slave. Even if we wanted to see in dotales a reference to the seruitium amoris, as Knox does, that would be not ‘a novel application of the motif’ but a flat and feeble anticlimax.

To judge from context, then, it seems clear that Rosati's interpretation is better. Hypsipyle is not presenting herself as a slave but as a woman with a dowry: ‘Lemnos will be your dowry, a land kindly natured to the farmer; you can count me too among richly dowered women.’ On this reading, the pentameter appropriately reiterates the concept expressed in the hexameter in an elegant ‘theme and variation’, and both the distich and the section reach their climax in the also metaliterary affirmation that Hypsipyle too—as many other heroines of Ovid's collection—is well dowered. Ovid's heroines often offer their beloved a dowry,Footnote 17 and Hypsipyle is clearly interested in including herself among them. Thus she contrasts herself to her rival Medea, whose idea of a dowry was somewhat original: Her. 12.201–4 dos ubi sit, quaeris? campo numerauimus illo, | qui tibi laturo uellus arandus erat. | aureus ille aries uillo spectabilis alto, | dos mea. In her note on this passage of Her. 12, Bessone—who clearly follows Rosati regarding the interpretation of dotales here—detects irony in Hypsipyle's words at 6.117–18: ‘il plurale generico (dotales: Ipsipile pensa alla sola Medea) appare indovinato al lettore, che pone sulla stessa linea la terza uxor dotata, Creusa.’Footnote 18 That is, according to Bessone, when Hypsipyle says ‘you can count me too among the richly dowered women’, she is thinking only of Medea, who after all can boast some sort of dowry, but the reader recognizes in her generalizing plural dotales a reference also to Creusa, the truly well-dowered wife. Be that as it may, that Hypsipyle is very much focussed on the comparison of herself to Medea in terms of dowry is demonstrated by her words at 6.137–8 quid refert, scelerata piam si uincet et ipso | crimine dotata est emeruitque uirum?

Even if the context demands a word for ‘well-dowered’, however, there remains the question as to whether dotales can bear that interpretation. We are reminded of Heinsius's words when he (unjustly) reproached Salmasius for having proposed dotales as meaning dotatas: ‘quod legem Latini sermonis ferre pernego’, and in fact there is no other passage which can support such a meaning. But there remains a workable solution, which retains the desired sense without resorting to semantic anomaly: to accept Heinsius's own conjecture dotatas instead of the transmitted quod/quid/quam/res tales:Footnote 19

Si coniectura nostra [that is, me quoque quot tales inter habere potes] in Nasonis hoc loco minus arridet, lege: me quoque dotatas inter habere potes. Sic dotatae regnum vetus Hippodamiae apud Propertium libro I. Eleg. VIII [Prop. 1.8.35].Footnote 20

Of course, from a palaeographical point of view dotales would be better; but the slightly more difficult explanation of the corruption (the whole word, and not only the initial do-, would have become illegible for some reason and then substituted with stopgaps) should not deter us from adopting a solution which would restore perfect sense to this problematic passage.

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).