Ovid's rarely studied Ibis is an elegiac companion-piece to the Tristia and Ex Ponto written after his banishment to the Black Sea in AD 8. Modelled on a poem of the same name by the Hellenistic poet Callimachus, Ibis stands out as an artistically contrived explosion of vitriol against an unnamed enemy who is characterised in terms of the Egyptian bird with its unprepossessing habits. Based in a tradition of curse-ritual, it is the most difficult of Ovid's poems to penetrate. Robinson Ellis's edition remains an indispensable - if typically eccentric - platform for the study of the poem's obscurities. Indeed Ellis deserves the primary credit for bringing Ibis back from obscurity into the light of day.This reissue of Ellis's 1881 edition includes a new introduction by Gareth Williams setting the edition in the context of earlier and later developments in scholarship. Ellis's edition not only made a significant contribution to research into the Ibis, it is an important representative of a particular vein of scholarship prevalent in nineteenth-century Latin study.

The pseudo-Virgilian Aetna poem has fascinated textual critics for centuries on account of its badly corrupted state. But it is fascinating for its content as well. It appears to date from the first half of the first century AD sometime prior to 79, for it describes Vesuvius as extinct. The highly original account of a volcano with scientific, if eccentric, views of volcanic activity, is enlivened by vivid imagery and digressions such as a section in praise of physical science and the tale of two brothers who rescued their parents from an eruption. A vigorous and enthusiastic poem, it repays further study within the didactic tradition. Robinson Ellis, according to The Times the 'greatest English Latinist' of his age, worked on the poem for decades, and his 1901 edition, which includes a translation and full commentary, constitutes a significant contribution to the study of the poem. His work remains of interest today, both to scholars working on the poem and to historians of classical scholarship.In her new introduction to this reissue of the complete Latin text and translation of the poem with Ellis's commentary, Katharina Volk discusses Ellis's achievement in the context of his career and as part of the history of critical engagement with the Aetna. She also provides an overview of work on the poem since Ellis's edition, and a bibliography.