Manuscript Traditions and the Transmission of Ovid's Works

Abstract

This chapter gives a sketch of the complex process by which Ovid's poems came down to the reader, first looking generally at the common factors in the process, and then examining in more detail the different traditions of the various works or groups of works. Nothing else survives of the direct transmission of Ovid before the Carolingian Renaissance. Several codices of the Ibis including G P E F H Z are furnished with scholia, which are written sometimes by the first hand, sometimes by a later. There are two early manuscripts, that transmit extracts from Martial, Halieutica , and Grattius: A = Vienna 277, B = Paris lat. 8071. When the great corpora of Ovid's works were put together in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Halieutica was not included, nor did any of the anthologists take verses from it. Keywords: Carolingian Renaissance; Halieutica ; Ibis ; Ovid; scholia