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Greek Feminines in -Ias: An Ovidian Predilection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

E. J. Kenney*
Affiliation:
Cambridge

Extract

The ordinary Latin words for ‘lonian’ are lonicus and lonius. Ovid does not use the former at all, and except for one problematical instance applies the latter only to the Ionian Sea (cf. OLD s. v.). Copyists, editors, and lexicographers, however, credit him, and him only, with Ioniacus, supposedly attested in two passages of almost identical wording:

Type
Shorter Notes
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1999

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References

1 On ‘Ionian Janus’ see Bömer on Met. 14.334.

2 As all too often, his report is incomplete. I suspect that they read inter et ionias, as does e.g. Camb. U.L. Add 7221, likewise of the thirteenth century.

3 In his note on that passage, however, Heinsius recanted his earlier opinion and proposed inter Mygdonidas in both places.

4 To which, as I have remarked before, editors, especially French editors, of Latin poetical texts would do well to pay more attention.

5 It is particularly notable that apart from the common Pleïas no examples are found in Propertius, who was by no means reluctant to exploit the sound of exotic Greek names.

6 From earlier poets I have recorded only names attested in Hellenistic texts. My guess is that a search for other examples would not produce a very rich haul. Euripides seems to constitute an interesting exception. * = figures in both lists; † = a (certain or plausible) conjecture.

7 Aeschylus wrote a Heliades (fr. 68 N2).

8 ἰωνι⋯ς = ἴoν at fr. 74.60 seems to have escaped the notice of the lexicographers.

9 Inferred from Plin. NH 5.28; see Pfeiffer ad loc.

10 An anomalous formation; see the commentators ad locc.

11 Hence Lucret. 4.545 Dauliades coni. Bergk.

12 ‘the Greek accidence strikes a mock-heroic note’ (N-H ad loc.).

13 Iliades in this sense is a Virgilianism’(Austin ad loc.).

14 inter Phaestiades Lenz (-adas in the index), Anderson.

15 On fr. 185: ‘Call. uti solet huiusmodi formis, v. ’Aκτι⋯ɛς, Πɛλασγι⋯δɛς etc.’. See Schmitt, R., Die Nominalbildung in den Dichtungen des Kallimachos von Kyrene (Wiesbaden, 1970), pp. 73–4Google Scholar; his list lumps together words in -⋯ς and -ι⋯ς, and is incomplete as regards Callimachus.

16 See Kenney, (ed.), Ovid Heroide XVI–XXI (1996), pp. 249–51Google Scholar; id., in J., Binns (ed.), Ovid (1973), pp. 126–7Google Scholar (by no means complete).