Two Conjectures

Extract

The inhabitants of Tomi are angry with Ovid because he has so often expressed his hatred of their country. The poet defends himself by saying that it is only the country, not its inhabitants, that he detests. Do not they themselves complain about the unpleasantness of their surroundings? Did not Hesiod complain about Ascra, his own birth-place?

esset perpetuo sua quam uitabilis Ascra
ausa est agricolae Musa docere senis.

Strictly speaking Hesiod did not say that Ascra was ‘always to be avoided’, though this is a natural inference from his words in Erga, 639–40:

νἀσσατο δ᾿ ἄγχ᾿ Ἑλικῶνος ὀιӡυρῇ ἐνὶ κώμῃ
”Ασκρῃ, χεῖμα κακῇ, θέρει ἀργαλέῃ, οὐδέ ποτ᾿ ἐσθλῇ.

The variants offered by the dett., miserabilis, mirabilis, mutabilis, point to the conclusion that the archetype was here difficult to make out. I suspect that the original was uitiabilis, the word here having the force of uitiosa. Lucretius (VI, 1231) has aerumnabile in the sense of aerumnosum; cf. the use of perniciabilis and lacrimabilis.