The Laus Ursae (inc. «Quos capis nigris»): an ode wrongly attributed to Giovanni Pontano

Abstract

The so-called Laus Ursae (inc. «Quos capis nigris»), a sapphic ode, was first edited and attributed to Pontano by Benedetto Soldati (Pontano’s first scientific editor). On the evidence of one manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana (Lat. XII 169 = 4562), in which the poem is found within an earlier version of Pontano’s collection Parthenopeus, Soldati published it in a separate section he called Appendice (as “App. 10” in hiw own numbering). Following an old intuition by Carlo Dionisotti, but through a new examination of the extant manuscript tradition, this paper argues that the presence of this ode in such a Pontanian context, which happens in only one sub-branch of the tradition, is likely due to an interpolation. The close reading of the poem provides further literary, stylistic and metrical evidence against the Pontanian authorship of this rather mediocre piece.