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Heroides 16.303–4

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Allan Kershaw
Allan Kershaw
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Chicago
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Extract

The several verbal responsions of this couplet to the preceding one are clear, and as mando produces mandata, so testor derives, I think, from testis. Read me teste ‘Idaei…’; ‘with me as witness…’. This reading adds greatly to the humour of the situation, where the hen is charged, in his presence, with caring for the fox. For testis as a witness to the audible (rather than the visible) cf. (e.g.) fors me sermoni testem dedit (Am. 1.8.21).

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , May 1998 , pp. 316
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1998

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References

1 Kenney, E. J., Ovid: Heroides XVI—XXI(Cambridge, 1996). It is noteworthy, however, that Heyworth's ipse et 'utis accepted by G. Rosati (Milan, 1989).Google Scholar

2 The responsion teste... testoris, of course, purely verbal; as CQ'sanonymous referee notes, ‘the invocation implied in 305 is to heaven above, the powers in general...’

3 A statistic which I find interesting: in Heroides16–21 there are nine instances of testis,but in the earlier poems of the collection only one.