Publii Ovidii Nasonis Metamorphoseon Libri XV

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by Ovid

Publii Ovidii Nasonis Metamorphoseon Libri XV
OvidPubliiOvidiiNasonisMetamorphoseon1751.jpg

Title page from Publii Ovidii Nasonis Metamorphoseon Libri XV, George Wythe Collection, Wolf Law Library, College of William & Mary.

Author Ovid
Editor Daniel Crispin
Translator {{{trans}}}
Published Londini: Impensis S. Ballard, J. & P. Knapton, S. Birt, T. Longman, D. Browne [and 13 others in London]
Date 1751
Edition In hac editione quinta fere notarum pars expungitur
Language Latin
Volumes {{{set}}} volume set
Pages [8], 475, [173]
Desc. 8vo (21 cm.)
Location [[Shelf {{{shelf}}}]]
  [[Shelf {{{shelf2}}}]]
Inscriptions, front free endpaper.
Modern readers are fortunate that the Roman elegiac poet Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) wrote of his own life in one of his poems, Tristia.[1] He received a Roman education due to his family’s high social and political status as equestrians.[2] As the culmination of his studies, Ovid went on the typical aristocratic “Grand Tour” of Greece.[3] Political life was not for him, so after he held minor posts in Rome, Ovid dedicated his life to poetry and became part of Messallian group of poets.[4] By 8 CE, Ovid “was the leading poet of Rome” but was suddenly banished by the Emperor Augustus to the city Tomis.[5] His exile (due to a poem and an error which offended the emperor) in this Greek-founded city lasted for ten years, during which he kept his Roman property and civic rights, but his books were all removed from public libraries in Rome.[6]


This particular work is Books 1- 15 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the original Latin. It is a fifth edition with the earlier editions’ notes removed. This poem is contained in fifteen books of hexameter which were completed immediately before his exile.[7] The poem contains a wide variety of memorable myths and legends, each telling of some type of supernatural transformation, “call[ing] attention to the boundaries between divine and human, animal and inanimate, raising fundamental questions about definition and hierarchy in the universe.” Ovid’s mastery of elegiac poetry was unsurpassed in his own time due to his variety and creative invention. “No Roman poet can equal Ovid’s impact upon western art and culture. Esp[ecially] remarkable in its appropriations has been the Metamorphoses.”[8]

Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library

Listed in the Jefferson Inventory of Wythe's Library as "Ovidii Metamorphoseon. Delph. 8vo." This was one of the books kept by Thomas Jefferson. He later sold a copy to the Library of Congress in 1815, but it no longer exists to verify the edition or Wythe's prior ownership.[9] George Wythe's Library[10] on LibraryThing merely indicates "Precise edition unknown." The Brown Bibliography[11] includes the 1751 edition based on E. Millicent Sowerby's inclusion of that edition in Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson. The Wolf Law Library purchased a copy of the same edition.

Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy

Bound in original calf with gilt compartments to spine. Includes previous owner inscriptions "William Chadwick, 1759," "John Turner, His Book, Anno Domini 1783," and "Simeon Willoughby, His Book, Anno Domini 1784" on the front free endpaper. Purchased from Tony Hutchinson.

Headpiece, first page of text.

References

  1. ↑ "Ovid” in The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, ed. by M.C. Howatson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
  2. ↑ "Ovid" in Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World, ed. by John Roberts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
  3. ↑ Ibid.
  4. ↑ "Ovid” in The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature.
  5. ↑ "Ovid" in Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World.
  6. ↑ "Ovid” in The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature.
  7. ↑ "Ovid" in Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World.
  8. ↑ Ibid.
  9. ↑ E. Millicent Sowerby, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson 2nd ed. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983), 4:449 (no.4339).
  10. ↑ LibraryThing, s. v. "Member: George Wythe", accessed February 28, 2014.
  11. ↑ Bennie Brown, "The Library of George Wythe of Williamsburg and Richmond," (unpublished manuscript, May, 2012) Microsoft Word file. Earlier edition available at: https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/13433

External Links

Read this book in Google Books.

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