Ego me nunc denique natam/gratulor — in fact, I congratulate us all. Thanks to the tireless efforts and more than twenty years of commitment of the general editor Alessandro Barchiesi and his co-commentators, we now possess the most comprehensive commentary in Italian (2005–2015) and first complete commentary in English (2024) of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, one of the most influential works of world literature. The commentary, both in its Italian and now English versions, is indispensable for anyone working on the poem (such as myself, who issued its first complete Norwegian translation, after sixteen years in the making, in November 2024).
Philip Hardie, one of the greatest Latinists currently alive, is the author of the last volume of both versions. The English edition, which is the object of the present review, is slimmer than the Italian with its reprinted Latin text (R. J. Tarrant for Oxford Classical Texts, 2004) and accompanying translation (by Gioachino Chiarini). Readers of the English version can still enjoy H.’s excellent preface, which functions as a pithy introduction to the major themes of the three books (13–15), which cover the approximately 1200 years from the Trojan war until the death of Julius Caesar, thus staging ‘a transition from the world of myth to the world of history and a transition from the Greek world to Italy’ (93). There is a helpful table of textual divergencies from Tarrant by H. (who, for example, prefers what is probably my favourite conjecture in the whole poem: Houseman’s prona at 14.339). The major part of the volume is still a magisterial commentary, which, according to H., is ‘a light revision with bibliographical updating, of the Italian version’ (xiii; the works of Rivero García, especially his commentary on Book 13, are among the important new bibliographical additions). The volume also includes the index of proper names (the same as in Tarrant 2004, 503–34), and a general index; both indices cover Books 1–15.
The English version is arguably more accessible than the Italian, simply because it is written in the lingua franca of our day and age. However, given that it does not simply contain but builds on Tarrant’s text, and that this text has been altered in several places, the employment of more complete lines, and not just select words, in bold, to mark each lemma of the commentary could have increased its accessibility further. Also, the Latin quoted in the commentary is normally not translated, whereas the Greek usually is (as in the Italian commentary). As a translation is also a commentary of sorts, the inclusion of one tailored for this volume would have been attractive. In very few cases I wish for some more information, for example on Hora (14.851). There is some vacillation between transliteration of Hekabe/Hecabe (e.g. 55–6) and Myscelus/Myskellos (e.g. 243) for reasons that remain obscure. As the Metamorphoses may sometimes appear overwhelming with its rich content and sudden shifts, Franz Bömer’s commentary (1969–1986) still represents a helpful supplement, especially concerning overviews and summaries, for example of the speech of Pythagoras (15.75–478).
These small details aside, it is hard to imagine a more suitable commentator for Books 13–15 than H. He is not only a world-leading expert on Ovid, but also on Lucretius and Vergil, both important soundboards for ‘Ovid’s Aeneid’ (91–108) and the Pythagoras section (249–304). The way in which H. combines his various fields of expertise, always in dialogue with Ovid’s Greek and Latin predecessors (including, especially, Ennius and Cicero), is simply masterful. It is also striking how, whenever a debated issue arises, H. offers a rich overview of various opinions, yet does not necessarily make clear his own stand, except subtly, perhaps, by means of deeply insightful observations that let the work speak for itself, such as: ‘O. does not state explicitly that Numa met Pythagoras’ (242), ‘O. puts on his solemn singing robes to end the poem’ (364), or ‘[this] questions the whole idea that a human ruler can really become a god on his death’ (365).
Moreover, the commentary offers not only all the information needed for someone working on the Metamorphoses but also opens avenues for further explorations. Thus, H.’s observations regarding the fundamental movement from Greece to Rome, the evocation of Horace (C. 2.20, 3.30, 4.9) in the poem’s epilogue (366–7), and its focus on fame, echoing the Amores ‘epilogue’ 3.15 (367–9), can be pushed further. For Greece can be seen as represented by Sappho, Ovid’s poetic predecessor who perhaps most conspicuously promotes her own (and not others’) fame, since she is evoked in all the relevant Horatian passages, which again can be seen as alluding to the single Heroides’ ‘epilogue’, the so-called Epistula Sapphus, which I believe is genuine (Thorsen, Ovid’s Early Poetry, 2014; see also Benjamin Nagy, DSH 38.3 (2023), 1183–99 and Mirko Donninelli, RFIC 152.1 (2024), 101–21). And the epilogue’s metempsychotic ore legar imagery (15.878; 373–4) can even be seen as alluding to the end of the Ars amatoria, where Cephalus catches Procris’ dying breath in his mouth (3.687–746). Thus, the commentary facilitates, although it does not explicate, the possibility of recognising echoes from all the ‘epilogues’ of Ovid’s major works before his Metamorphoses, the Heroides, the Amores and the Ars amatoria, in the epilogue of his masterpiece.
In sum, the whole commentary, crowned by H.’s masterful contribution, is a gift of the highest quality to the entire profession of Classics.
