nec mora, perlectis rescribat multa iubeto:
odi, cum late splendida cera uacat. 20
comprimat ordinibus uersus, oculosque moretur
margine in extremo littera rasa meos.

The context is Ovid's instruction to Corinna's maid, Nape, to see that Corinna receives his message (written that morning on wax tablets) and that she writes back to him at length – unused wax on a tablet is a hateful thing to see. The problem is the word rasa in line 22. There are two ways in which it is commonly taken, one of them possible, though difficult, the other less difficult but less possible. The word means ‘erased’ (as in rasis tabellis at A.A.I, 437 etc.), which gives the sense ‘Tell her to cram the lines together in their rows, and may a letter she has erased at the edge of the margin delay my eyes.’ Thus Ovid wishes to draw out his reading of Corinna's reply by attempting to decipher a mistake she has made in an area of the tablet not normally covered – ‘some blotted letter’, in Marlowe's version, ‘On the last edge to stay mine eyes the better’. And so – where translations or commentaries allow us to see their mind – the word appears to have been taken by some early as well as a few modern editors of Ovid.