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Rights of Way in Ovid (Heroides 20.146) and Plautus (Curculio 36)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. S. Hollis
A. S. Hollis
Affiliation:
Keble College, Oxford
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Extract

Acontius rhetorically addresses the young man to whom Cydippe's parents have betrothed her, whom he imagines as showing excessive familiarity while visiting the girl's sickbed. In line 146, ‘spes’ may be considered the vulgate reading; the noun can be used concretely, of the object of one's hopes (OLD 4), a person in whom hopes are centred (OLD 5), or sometimes as an endearment (OLD 5c). For application to a girl with suitors, cf. Ovid, Met. 4.795 ‘multorumque fuit spes invidiosa procorum’. Or one could take ‘spes’ in Her. 20.146 generally, = id quod spero. But, in any case, ‘spes’ is somewhat disappointing. After the strong imagery of 145 (cutting crops), we expect something no less definite in the pentameter, and, in particular, a word which will cohere with, and reinforce, the notion of providing access (‘quis tibi fecit iter?’). In this respect ‘spes’ fails to contribute anything. Nor does the manuscript evidence point unambiguously to ‘spes’. Some manuscripts have the unmetrical ‘spem’, while Heinsius found in a Medicean manuscript the reading ‘sepem’, which was taken up by Burman, and by a number of other editors. To this, however, A. Palmer made an objection which seems not merely pedantic: ‘I should rather have expected per sepem; for a man has a right to go up to, as far as, another man's boundary.’

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , December 1994 , pp. 545 - 549
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1994

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References

1 I follow both the text and the numeration of Dörrie, H. (Berlin and New York, 1971).Google Scholar

2 Note that in Her. 20.146 the plural would be used, which is not normal in this sense.

3 Including G. P. Goold in his 1977 revision of Showerman, , and Moya del Bãno, F., Ovidio, , Heroidas (Madrid, 1986), p. 175Google Scholar. ‘Sepem’ was also favoured by P. A. M. Thompson in his 1989 Oxford D.Phil, thesis (pp. 130–1), from which some textual notes appeared in CQ N.S. 43 (1993), 258–65.Google Scholar

4 In his Oxford, 1898, edition of the Heroides, p. 491.

5 Professor Nisbet wondered whether ‘sepem’ might in fact do this job, but felt, very reasonably, that the plural would be more appropriate, as in Virgil, Ecl. 8.37 ‘saepibus in nostris’ (where not only the plural, but also ‘in’, makes the difference). Professor Kenney (who most kindly showed me a draft of his forthcoming commentary on the double letters) is inclined to print ‘ad sepem’, taking ad to mean ‘up to and into’. That makes no problem for phrases such as ‘ad urbes’, ‘ad aures’. But with e.g. ‘ad fluvium’, would one naturally understand (without further elucidation) that the river was actually crossed? The more so with ‘ad sepem’: since the noun denotes an obstacle deliberately created to prevent further progress, it seems hard to take ad to imply not merely ‘into’ but even ‘through and out the other side’.

6 Words connected with ‘saepio’ are often written ‘sep-’ rather than ‘saep-’ in manuscripts. Indeed several editors of Columella have been content to print sometimes one form, sometimes the other; see Betts, G. G. and Ashworth, W. D., Index to the Uppsala Edition of Columella (Uppsala, 1971), p. 511Google Scholar. The spelling with ae is in Virgil's capital MSS, as Professor Kenney points out.

7 Professor Kenney suggested to me that here in Ovid ‘saepta’ might be slightly preferable to ‘saeptum’, adding that he would then be tempted to rewrite à la Heinsius ‘saepta per alterius’ – this would make the legal point slightly different, ‘passage through’ (as in Curculio 36) rather than ‘access to’.

8 I looked for this passage and this image in Elaine, Fantham, Comparative Studies in Republican Latin Imagery (Toronto, 1972)Google Scholar, but the entry ‘trespass’ in her Index IV refers only to the invasion of other literary genres.

9 Although the phrase ‘iter facere’ (OLD ‘iter’ 4) need not have legal connotations, in a context like this it will inevitably shade into the technical legal use of ‘iter’ = right of way (OLD 4c).

10 See further Alan, Watson, The Law of Property in the Later Republic (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar, ch. 9 ‘Ususfructus and Similar Rights’.

11 Cf. Cicero, Verr. 2.4.80 ‘non praecerpo fructum offici tui, non alienam mihi laudem adpeto’. For this reason ‘praecerpere’ is nicer than the variant ‘decerpere’.

12 It might be held that they belonged to the owner of the land as long as they were growing in the soil, but to the usufructuary as soon as he had cut them (Digest 7.4.13, vol. I, p. 237, discussing the position ‘si fructuarius messem fecit et decessit’).

13 Though sometimes ‘quis permisit…?’ may introduce a rhetorical question without legal resonances (e.g. Cicero, De Oratore 2.366 ‘quis Antonio permisit…ut…partis faceret…?’).

14 The verb is commonly applied to the Emperor, a praetor (or other magistrate), the Law (or a particular law), etc.

15 Jurists might still argue about the precise nature of the access granted (Digest 7.6.1.3, vol. I, p. 241, ‘Pomponius in his fifth book is undecided whether, when a usufruct has been left as a legacy, the usufructuary is entitled to a right of access [aditus] only, and thus to an iter, or whether he can in fact claim a via too’).

16 This point is worth stressing, since some have denied the Ovidian authorship of the Acontius and Cydippe letters.

17 YCS 21 (1969), 243–63Google Scholar, at 252, 256–7, 257–8, 259 and 262; the last two references deal with the Acontius and Cydippe letters, which were also the subject of Kenney's earlier article, ‘Liebe als juristisches Problem’, Philologus 111 (1967), 212–32Google Scholar (though he does not discuss 20.145–6).

18 YCS 21 (1969), 262Google Scholar, on Her. 21.135–50 (Dörrie's numeration).

19 In the spirit of Kenney, , YCS 21 (1969), 243, 248, 256.Google Scholar

20 I am grateful to Professor E. J. Kenney and Professor R. G. M. Nisbet for comments on earlier drafts of this article; also to Dr Paul Thompson (see n. 3 above).