¹ Lipsius: Ad Annales Corn(elii) Taciti Liber Commentarius, sive Notae (Lyons, 1585), 375–6. Brotier: Opera (Paris, 1771), 2.397. Bach: Operum Quae Supersunt (Leipzig, 1834), 1.400. Ruperti: Opera (Hannover, 1834), 2.168.

² Ritter: (i) Opera (Bonn, 1834), 1.332; (ii) Opera (Cambridge, 1848), 2.100; (iii) ‘Bemerkungen zu Tacitus’, Philologus 19 (1863), 665–79Google Scholar, at 677–8.

³ So (i.e. either imm- or inm-) C.D. Fisher, Annalium ab Excessu Divi Augusti Libri (Oxford, 1906), ad loc.; H. Fuchs, Annalium ab Excessu Divi Augusti Quae Supersunt (Frauenfeld, 1949), 2.47; E. Koestermann, Libri Qui Supersunt (Leipzig, 1960), 1.256; P. Wuilleumier, Annales, Livres XI–XII (Paris, 1976), 95; H. Heubner, Libri Qui Supersunt (Stuttgart, 1983), 1.268; K. Wellesley, Libri Qui Supersunt (Leipzig, 1986), 1.2.41.

⁴ Several variants are recorded by B. Maurenbrecher, Historiarum Reliquiae (Leipzig, 1891), 139: qua] quia: itaque; uis piscium] piscium uis; Ponto] ex Ponto; erupit] erumpit.

⁵ The other possibility is the Cimmerian Bosporus: the fragment ‘could be part of a Sallustian treatment of the riches of the Sea of Azov’ (P. McGushin, Sallust The Histories [Oxford, 1994], 2.105, on fr. 3.46). But Tacitus' imitation aside, one would expect Sallust to have focussed for economic reasons on the migration towards Byzantium. Beyond that, the Sea of Azov seems to have been known not for the inrush of fish (Ponto erupit) but for the outrush; cf. Strabo 7.6.2 ἐκπίπτει, ps.-Hipparch. (E. Maass, Analecta Eratosthenica [Berlin, 1883], 147.7) ἐξέρχεται, Juv. 4.43 effundit.

⁶ OLD s.v. uis 8.

⁷ Cf. Livy 38.18.8 piscium accolis ingentem uim praebet [sc. Sangarius flumen], Lucil. 769–70 piscium | magnam atque altilium uim interfecisti (i.e. ‘you've polished off’).

⁸ Of the eleven other instances where uis has this sense in Tacitus, the intensifying adjective is omitted only at Hist. 3.34.1 et si qua alia uis per Alpes rueret and Ann. 15.5.3 ui locustarum (where, however, the text is uncertain and both ingenti and immensa have been conjectured). Otherwise, besides immensa, one finds ingens, innumera, magna and tanta (A. Gerber and A. Greef, Lexicon Taciteum [Hildesheim, 1962], 2.1784^a).

⁹ Cf. Stat. Silv. 1.2.86 nec sic meta pallebat in ipsa [sc. Hippomenes], Pind. Pyth. 9.114 ἐν τέρμασιν … ἀγῶνος (i.e. a footrace). Pindar refers to the turning post marking the finish (see n. 21). So too probably Statius: giving her suitors a head start and pursuing cum telo, Atalanta overtook them intra finem termini and killed them (Hyg. Fab. 185.2, cf. Apollod. Bibl. 3.9.2).

¹⁰ D.W. Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Fishes (London, 1947), 13, cf. 84.

¹¹ Oppian, Hal. 4.504-5 likewise uses the term πηλαμύδες and even says θύννης … εἰλείθυιαι, ‘progeny of the female tuna’, when speaking of the bonito (Thompson [n. 10], 84, cf. 197–8). For the application to tuna, cf. Arist. Hist. an. 6.571a Balme, Ath. 7.303b, Plin. HN 9.47.

¹² Compare, however, Hdt. 4.144.2, Plin. HN 5.149.

¹³ Translated by H.L. Jones, Strabo Geography (Cambridge, MA, 1924), 3.281, 3.283.

¹⁴ For the scale and organization of fishing at Byzantium, see Dumont, J.C., ‘La pêche du thon à Byzance à l’époque hellénistique’, REA 78–9 (1976–7), 96–119 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 107–16; A. Marzano, Harvesting the Sea (Oxford, 2013), 237–9. The city's role as an exporter (cf. Polyb. 4.38.8–9) has been challenged by D. Braund, ‘Fish from the Black Sea: classical Byzantium and the Greekness of trade’, in J. Wilkins, D. Harvey and M. Dobson (edd.), Food in Antiquity (Exeter, 1995), 162–70; however, see E. Lytle, ‘Marine fisheries and the ancient Greek economy’ (Diss., Duke University, 2006), 98–109, with n. 172. In general, see J.M. Højte, ‘The archaeological evidence for fish processing in the Black Sea region’, in T. Bekker-Nielsen (ed.), Ancient Fishing and Fish Processing in the Black Sea Region (Aarhus, 2005), 133–60.

¹⁵ Polybius gives a detailed account of the current and its peculiar effects, but without mentioning fish (4.43.1-4.44.10). See P. Rhode, Thynnorum Captura (Leipzig, 1890), 34.

¹⁶ Arist. Hist. an. 7.598b εἰσπλέουσι δ’ οἱ θύννοι [sc. εἰς τὸν Πόντον] ἐπὶ δεξιὰ ἐχόμενοι τῆς γῆς, ἐκπλέουσι δ᾽ ἐπ’ ἀριστερά (i.e. from the vantage of a southern observer)· τοῦτο δὲ φασί τινες ποιεῖν ὅτι τῷ δεξιῷ ὀξύτερον ὁρῶσι, φύσει οὐκ ὀξὺ βλέποντες. I hope to treat this theory more fully elsewhere.

¹⁷ Distinguish Strabo's use of the term ‘Horn’, i.e. with reference to the inlet (7.6.2 κόλπος) forming the northern side of promontory.

¹⁸ Rhode (n. 15), 34.

¹⁹ A second fragment of the Histories may be pertinent here, 3.52 fine inguinum ingrediuntur mare. The suggestion of R. Dietsch (Gai Sallusti Crispi Quae Supersunt [Leipzig, 1859], 2.92, on fr. 77) that Sallust may be describing the capture of fish at Byzantium is rejected by Maurenbrecher ([n. 4], 132, on fr. 52, ‘piscatores aut e lintribus piscantur aut ex terra’), but Strabo says the recesses in the Golden Horn are so narrow that the swarming fish are caught even by hand (7.6.2 ὥστε καὶ χερσὶν ἁλίσκεσθαι).

²⁰ J.H. Humphrey, Roman Circuses, Arenas for Chariot Racing (Berkeley, 1986), 257.

²¹ Although the weight of the archeological evidence suggests that Roman chariot-races ended near the middle of the right straightaway as viewed from the gate (Humphrey [n. 20], 85–90), the term meta(e) is often employed figuratively by poets to refer to the goal of some course or endeavour; e.g. Ov. Rem. am. 413 simul ad metas uenit finita uoluptas. The metaphor may derive from footraces, where the same post marked the start and the finish: S.G. Miller, Ancient Greek Athletics (New Haven, 2004), 44–5. The archetypal chariot-race in Iliad 23 also follows this plan, but the position of the finish in Greek hippodromes is unknown (Humphrey [n. 20], 10). One sometimes finds meta(e) in the sense ‘goal’ even when the chariot imagery is elaborated: e.g. Ov. Trist. 4.8.35-6 nec procul a metis …, | curriculo grauis est facta ruina meo. In our passage and other figurative instances, an earlier stage, not the goal, is indicated: e.g. Cic. Cael. 75 in hoc flexu quasi aetatis … fama adulescentis paululum haesit ad metas (‘got hung up at the turn’).

²² Thus, for example, Ov. Am. 3.2.12 stringam metas, but 69 metam … circuit.

²³ Somewhat different is the ‘Track of Achilles’ (Strab. 7.3.19 Ἀχίλλειος Δρόμος), a narrow spit that extends for eighty miles (as Pliny knew, HN 4.83) along the northern shore of the Pontus near the mouth of the river Dnieper (Figure 4). Here we have the ‘course’ itself, not a central barrier (cf. Mela 2.5). Sallust may have remarked this feature in his excursus; cf. McGushin (n. 5), 2.107, on fr. 3.49.

²⁴ The assumption that the ancients possessed tolerably accurate maps—or, indeed, ‘map consciousness’—has been vigorously challenged in recent decades, the ‘credulous’ approach of O.A.W. Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps (Ithaka, 1985) yielding to the relentless scepticism of K. Brodersen, Terra Cognita: Studien zur römischen Raumerfassung (Hildesheim, 1995) and R.J.A. Talbert, ‘Greek and Roman mapping: twenty-first century perspectives’, in id. and R.W. Unger (edd.), Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Leiden, 2008), 9–27. Often, though, the sceptics seem too sceptical, and even they must acknowledge the existence of bad maps, i.e. specialist knowledge of Greek ‘astronomisch-mathematische Geographie’ mediated to a wider audience ‘in höchst schematischen Graphiken’ (Brodersen [this note], 289; cf. 73–4 and Index s.v. ‘Schemabild’). According to a fragment of Sallust's Histories (3.63), the Black Sea speciem efficit Scythici arcus, i.e. so that the north shore describes the bow, with Crimea as the grip, and the relatively straight south shore the string (McGushin [n. 5], 105, on fr. 3.44). Ammianus Marcellinus (22.8.4–6) seems to follow a tradition that likened the waterway connecting the Aegean and the Pontus to the Greek letter Φ, i.e. the Propontis extended by the two straits. Polybius (1.42.3–5) was aware not only that Sicily had three conspicuous promontories, but that it was shaped like a triangle. Plutarch, if nothing else, reveals his own map-consciousness when he tells how the Athenians took to making impromptu sketches of the island before the expedition of 415—sketches showing ‘the nature of the surrounding sea and the harbours and regions of the island where it faces Libya’ (Nic. 12). Talbert (JRS 77 [1987], 210–12) discounts Plutarch's testimony in his review of Dilke by saying that ‘it was really just an area familiar to them from first-hand acquaintance which was being sketched’. But even that would be sufficient here: a crude representation of the two ‘arms’ of the Bosporus, based on the casual observations of travellers as they approached the strait from north and south.

²⁵ Virgil's other designation of the promontory, proiecta … saxa, seems to discourage this theory. For proiectus, see N. Horsfall, Virgil, Aeneid 3 A Commentary (Leiden, 2006), 465, on line 699.

²⁶ The orator Eumenius (a.d. 297) describes detailed maps in the porticoes of a school in Autun (Pan. Lat. 9.20.2). As for Agrippa's orbis terrarum in Porticus Vipsania (not yet completed in 7 b.c.), the evidence in Pliny seems to point to a map (HN 3.17, 6.139; cf. Dilke [n. 24], 41–53), but we have very little to go on. Brodersen (n. 24), 268–87 argues that the portico featured only an inscription, a bare list of prominent physical features with associated measurements.

²⁷ Humphrey (n. 20), 256.

²⁸ Hor. Carm. 1.1.4–5 metaque feruidis | euitata rotis; Ov. Am. 3.2.12 nunc stringam metas interiore rota; Verg. Aen. 5.170–1 (the ship race) radit iter laeuum interior … et metis tenet aequora tuta relictis. Cf. Hom. Il. 23.333–45.

²⁹ Ovid berates a charioteer for swinging wide at the post (Am. 3.2.69–71 me miserum, metam spatioso circuit orbe; | … | quid facis, infelix?). Likewise in Virgil's ship race, the helmsman Menoetes is subjected to various abuse when he veers away from the rocks marking the turn (Aen. 5.164–82).

³⁰ Cf. Hom. Il. 23.392–4: his yoke broken at the turn (?), the driver's team dashes off the track (ἀμφὶς ὁδοῦ) and sends him tumbling; Soph. El. 728–30: ‘shipwrecked’ chariots fill ‘the whole plain’; 743–8: the driver falls from his car after striking the post and his horses ‘are scattered (διεσπάρησαν) into the middle of the course’.

³¹ H.A. Harris, Sport in Greece and Rome (Ithaca, 1972), 170.

³² Both of these taraxippoi and another one at the Isthmus are discussed by Pausanias (6.20.15-19). My summary derives from Humphrey (n. 20), 9.

³³ Humphrey, J.H., ‘Prolegomena to the study of the hippodrome at Caesarea Maritima’, BASO 213 (1974), 2–45 Google Scholar, at 23.

³⁴ Suet. Claud. 21.3.

³⁵ For the simplex territus in the sense ‘spooked’, compare, for example, Tac. Ann. 1.66.1 equus … uagus et clamore territus, Liv. 30.18.7 ad quorum [sc. elephantorum] stridorem odoremque et adspectum territi equi.

³⁶ See A.J. Woodman with C.S. Kraus (edd.), Tacitus Agricola (Cambridge, 2014), 275–6.

³⁷ GL 2.436.6–7 Hertz. See McGushin (n. 5), 1.172, on fr. 99.

³⁸ ‘At the simplest level, dolphins were chosen because they were famous for their speed, being considered … the fastest living creatures' (Humphrey [n. 20], 262), but they also served ‘to emphasize the connection with Neptune, the god not just of the sea but of horses' (F. Meijer, Chariot Racing in the Roman Empire [trans. L. Waters] [Baltimore, 2010], 44).

³⁹ The emulation is well documented, but there was also a falling away. Syme, R., ‘A fragment of Sallust?’, Eranos 55 (1957), 171–4Google Scholar, at 173 = Roman Papers (Oxford, 1979), 1.336–8, at 337: ‘the subsequent books [i.e. after 12] reveal … a less frequent recourse to the Sallustian manner’. See also id., Tacitus (Oxford, 1958), 2.732.

⁴⁰ Syme (n. 39 [1958]), 2.472.

⁴¹ Cf. Lucr. 5.397–8 auia cum Phaethonta rapax uis solis equorum | aethere raptauit toto.

⁴² Compare Juvenal's periphrasis Hadriaci spatium admirabile rhombi (4.39), in a setting of suitable bombast.

⁴³ Three times in Sallust (see R. Syme, Sallust [Berkeley, 1964], 258, with n. 108), five times, perhaps six in Tacitus (Gerber and Greef [n. 8], 2.1634^a), not in Livy. But ea tempestate is frequent in all three authors.

⁴⁴ Cf. Plin. HN 9.29 (quoted above, p. 263).

⁴⁵ Four times in Livy; seventeen in Lucretius (with just one exception, as an adverb), seven in Virgil (not G. 2.157 subter labentia, i.e. a single word), twice in Ovid (not Trist. 3.10.33), seventeen in Statius (generally as a preposition). Tacitus may have recalled another terrified undersea crossover: cf. Verg. Aen. 3.694-5 Alphaeum fama est huc Elidis amnem | occultas egisse uias subter mare , Ecl. 10.4 (Arethusa) cum fluctus subterlabere Sicanos. Ovid acknowledges Virgil with the single instance of subter in the Metamorphoses, 5.502 (Arethusa) subter que imas ablata cauernas.

⁴⁶ G. Walser, Rom, das Reich und die fremden Völker in der Geschichtsschreibung der frühen Kaiserzeit (Baden-Baden, 1951), 27, n. 93: ‘Bezeichnend für Tacitus ist die Erklärung des Fischreichtums mit “psychologischen” Gründen … ; in Wirklichkeit handelt es sich um eine starke Strömung … Tacitus hat sich in der Überlieferung die kurioseste Erklärung ausgesucht.’ Walser tries to refer the oddity to a larger tendency, i.e. Tacitus' chronic reluctance, in his opinion, to see things as they really are. E. Koestermann, Cornelius Tacitus, Annalen (Heidelberg, 1967), 3.218 is duly sceptical, but his own explanation, ‘nur rhetorischer Aufputz’, is simply a way of sweeping the matter under the rug.

⁴⁷ TLL 5.836.72-5.

⁴⁸ Ritter (n. 2 [1848]), 2.100 rightly finds the accusative to be out of place here (‘Male faciunt, qui formam Pontum … conantur vindicare’) and then, following the Sallustian model, wrongly prints the ablative. According to Syme (n. 39 [1957 = 1979]), 173 = 337, ‘Tacitus here surpasses his model with a poetical turn.’ But another observation is closer to the mark: id. (n. 39 [1958]), 1.349, ‘Elevation is one of Tacitus' favourite devices for irony and for mockery … Sometimes a single word will do … Similarly, the employment of bathos.’

⁴⁹ Meijer (n. 38), 44: ‘In Roman eyes the racetrack and everything that went with it was a model of the cosmos in miniature.’

⁵⁰ quid figuram metae habet? scilicet, a shadow cast by the earth (Cic. Div. 2.17 meta noctis), a hill (Livy 37.27.7 in modum metae … fastigatus), a tapered bag (Columella, Rust. 9.15.12), a haystack (2.18.2), a cheese (Mart. 3.58.35), an abstract representation of a goddess (Tac. Hist. 2.3.2), an obelisk (Amm. Marc. 17.4.7) and so on (TLL 8.863.10–864.9). That the generic sense ‘cone’ underlies such comparisons is very doubtful. Who is so dryly analytical that the description ‘shaped like a pyramid’ does not transport him straightaway to Egypt?

⁵¹ I am grateful to Steve Coates and Sarah Whittier for their criticism of an earlier draft of this paper, to Bruce Gibson for important suggestions at the editing stage and to Joel Tarbox for his help with the figures.