Critics generally have not warmed to Heroides 8 (in which Hermione appeals to her husband, Orestes, to rescue her from Pyrrhus, who has claimed her as his promised bride, carried her off, and holds her prisoner). Jacobson opined that the poem is ‘not very successful’ and claimed that the lengthy argumentation is ‘rather boring, not to say sometimes silly and annoying’, while Palmer described it as ‘the feeblest and least poetical of all the Heroides’. However, scholars have largely neglected some typically Ovidian cleverness and complexity in kaleidoscopic play with character. Ovid's Hermione is Hermione, but she also takes on the guise of other mythological heroines, and she represents a complete inversion of an earlier depiction of Hermione. All of this gives the poem a distinct intellectual appeal to supplement the emotional impact, with witty touches to ensure that the epistle is not mawkish.

In Plutarch's Convivium septem sapientium (CSS) a narration of the banquet proper is preceded by an account of the walk to the banquet of three of the participants: Thales, Diocles and Niloxenus, a messenger of the Egyptian pharaoh Amasis. Upon learning that Niloxenus brings a letter from Amasis to Bias, Thales says with laughter: εἴ τι κακὸν αὖθις εἰς Πριήνην· διαλύσει γὰρ Βίας, ὡς διέλυσεν αὐτὸς τὸ πρῶτον (CSS 146E–F: ‘if it is something bad – to Priene again! For Bias will solve it, just as he solved the first one’). Scholars have noticed that Thales’ words echo a Greek proverb, transmitted in Zenobius’ collection: εἴ τι κακὸν εἰς Πύρραν, ‘if it is something bad – to Pyrrha’. However, the purpose of Plutarch's reference to this particular proverb has thus far remained unclear. The aim of this contribution is to shed light on Thales’ words by examining the meaning of the Pyrrha proverb and suggesting an interpretation which explains the function of Plutarch's allusion to it.

I have deliberately left ζυγόν untranslated, for it is from this ambiguous noun that we will take our starting point. Two of the most prominent scholars to analyse this hymn have interpreted ζυγόν radically differently. According to Ewen Bowie in his survey of Antonine poetry, the word refers to the ‘balance’ or scales of justice with which Nemesis weighs men's fates. Tim Whitmarsh, on the other hand, believes that it refers to the ‘yoke’ of the chariot the goddess drives, and links the image to a wider leitmotif of deities as charioteers that he detects throughout Mesomedes’ hymnic poetry.

Heroides 9 takes the form of a letter sent by Deianira to Hercules as a reinforcement to the tunic smeared with Nessus' blood which she has already dispatched in the mistaken belief that it will revive the hero's love for her. In this epistle she tries to persuade her husband to give up his latest girlfriend (Iole) by showing him that she loves him, by arousing pity for herself, and by making him feel ashamed of his philandering and see that he thereby disgraces himself. Obviously there is pathos here, particularly as the deaths of Hercules and Deianira loom in the background, but there is also wit, irony, and (especially dark) humour, creating a piquant tonal mixture which has been almost entirely neglected by critics. They have seen the sadness, and some of the irony (which is taken to be purely tragic), but they have not grasped the facetious aspects, whereby our irreverent poet ensures that the piece does not lapse into mawkishness and engages the head as well as the heart.

eliciunt caelo te, Iuppiter; unde minores
nunc quoque te celebrant Eliciumque uocant.
constat Auentinae tremuisse cacumina siluae,
terraque subsedit pondere pressa Iouis.   (Ov. Fasti 3.327–30)

in medio gramen, muscoque adoperta uirenti
manabat saxo uena perennis aquae;
inde fere soli Faunus Picusque bibebant.

As the narrator of the Ciris prepares to describe Cupid's attack on Scylla, daughter of Nisus, he offers a concise aretalogy of this powerful god (133–9):

sed malus ille puer, quem nec sua flectere mater
iratum potuit, quem nec pater atque auus idem
Iuppiter (ille etiam Poenos domitare leones
et ualidas docuit uires mansuescere tigris,
ille etiam diuos homines – sed dicere magnum est),
idem tum tristis acuebat paruulus iras
Iunonis magnae ...

In a recent note, I collected instances of ‘stichometric allusion’, the technique in which poets allude, in one or more of their own verses, to source verses with corresponding line numbers. The technique existed in Hellenistic Greek poetry, but seems more prevalent (or at least, detectable) among the Latin poets of the Augustan era, who applied it to Greek and Latin predecessors alike, as well as internally to their own work. New illustrations of each type may be added here to those previously brought to light. Further examples, detected in an unsystematic fashion, no doubt lie dormant in published discussions and commentaries. Callimachus is still the only known Greek practitioner; perhaps his Roman successors considered the technique not merely Hellenistic but Callimachean. Authors of later ages employ the same techniques in equally haphazard fashion, although this does not mean that they had necessarily noticed examples from antiquity.

That Claudian imitates Virgil's Georgics in the De raptu Proserpinae is well known. Most of his allusions are restricted to Golden Age or Underworld imagery, largely from Books 1, 2, and 4. However, one imitation of the third Georgic that appears not to have been noted previously occurs at De raptu Proserpinae 1.82. The context is Claudian's famous description of Pluto enthroned:

ipse rudi fultus solio nigraque uerendus
maiestate sedet: squalent inmania foedo
sceptra situ; sublime caput maestissima nubes
asperat et dirae riget inclementia formae;
terrorem dolor augebat.     (De raptu Proserpinae 1.79–83)

optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aeui
prima fugit; subeunt morbi tristisque senectus
et labor, et durae rapit inclementia mortis.   (Georgics 3.66–8)

Paul of Aegina's (fl. c. 630) Pragmateia is the only extant Greek medical text from antiquity that discusses the extraction of arrows and small missiles. In his book on surgery, Paul details how to extract arrows according to their properties and the parts of the body which they have wounded (6.88). He prefaces his instructions by describing how arrows differ in their material, figure, size, number, mode, and power. Paul's account of arrow varieties appears to reflect the environment of his medical practice, seventh-century Alexandria, for he refers to Egyptian arrow types when listing the material composition and sizes of different arrows.