Laudator Temporis Acti

R.J. Tarrant, "Silver Threads Among the Gold: A Problem in the Text of Ovid's Metamorphoses," Illinois Classical Studies 14.1/2 (Spring/Fall, 1989) 103-117 (at 112-113):

For a poet capable of almost any extravagance in coining adjectives in -fer and -ger, Ovid appears to have been remarkably sparing with adjectives in -ax. The following are securely attested in the Metamorphoses: audax, capax, edax, fallax, ferax, fugax, loquax, minax, pugnax, rapax, sagax, tenax, vivax, and vorax; all of these appear as well in the elegiacs, along with emax, mordax, procax, and salax; sequax and uerax occur once each in the double letters of the Heroides, which are probably late compositions if genuine but whose Ovidian authorship is not beyond doubt.²⁰ Virgil, though not lavish in using these adjectives, is still the probable inventor of pellax and sternax.²¹ Ovid, on the other hand, has no clear example of a new adjective of this kind; all those just listed had already appeared either in prose or verse, and usually in both.²² Perhaps formations of this kind struck him as disagreeably archaic, or else he found them stylistically inappropriate: many of the bolder experiments of this type are found in passages of comic abuse, such as Plautus' procax rapax trahax (Pers. 410) and perenniserue lurco edax furax fugax (421) or Lucilius' manus tagax (1031 M) or the pejorative term linguax attributed by Gellius to the ueteres along with locutuleius and blatero, while others appear in "low" (i.e., commercial or banausic) contexts, like Cato's precept patrem familias uendacem, non emacem esse oportet (Agr. 2.7) and Gaius' description of an ideal slave as constantem aut laboriosum aut curracem <aut> uigilacem (Dig. 21.1.18 pr.).<sup>23

20</sup> In Her. 4.46 sequacis is a variant for fugacis. This list was compiled by searching the works of Ovid currently available on compact disk for the relevant endings (-ax, -acis, etc.) and by reading through the remaining works (Heroides 16-21, Ibis, Tristia, Ex Ponto). I am grateful to Richard Thomas for encouragement and technological guidance.

²¹ Virgil seems also to have introduced uivax to elevated poetry; it occurs before him only in Afranius 251 R². I am grateful to Wendell Clausen for information on Virgilian practice and for alerting me to the work of De Nigris Mores cited in n. 19.

²² Bömer on Met. 8.839 notes that uorax is not found in Virgil, Horace, or the elegists, but does not mention the word's prominent appearances in Republican literature, cf. Catullus 29.2 and 10 impudicus et uorax et aleo, Cic. Phil. 2.67 quae Charybdis tam uorax?; both passages appear as quotations in Quintilian, and the latter was recalled by Ovid in Ib. 385 Scylla uorax Scyllaeque aduersa Charybdis.

²³ Ovid's only use of emax (Ars 1.419 f.) clearly exploits the word's commercial flavor: insitor ad dominam ueniet discinctus emacem / expediet merces teque sedente suas.

"The work of De Nigris Mores" is S. De Nigris Mores, "Sugli Aggettivi latini in -ax," Acme 25 (1972) 263-313.