This reissue of Robinson Ellis’s classic 1881 edition of Ovid’s rarely studied Ibis includes a new introduction by Gareth Williams that places the edition in the context of earlier and later developments in classical scholarship. Modeled on a poem of the same name by the Hellenistic author Callimachus, Ibis stands out as a contrived explosion of vitriol against an unnamed enemy, who is characterized in terms of the distinctive Egyptian bird. Ellis’s edition of this notoriously opaque poem made a significant contribution to the understanding of Ovid; for today’s readers it also illuminates a particular style of scholarship prevalent in the nineteenth-century study of Latin.
