Pontica. Un elegante frammento poetico sulle creature marine (AL 720 R2 = FPL4 76 BLAENSDORF)

In Bländorf’s collection of fragments, as entry 76 among the incertorum versus, it is registered a text consisting of 22 hexameters. It goes under the title Pontica. This fragment used to be ascribed to Solinus, as it is preserved in manuscripts containing the Collectanea rerum memorabilium. Mommsen printed the Pontica at the end of his edition of Solinus (1895[2]), but he cast doubt over the attribution of the hexameters. The text, really elegant but unfortunately incomplete, is (or seems to be) the preface to a didactic work on sea-creatures. This paper aims at presenting the text, its manuscript tradition and its critical problems, providing the poem with Italian translation and comment.