In the poem which sets the seal on his three books of odes, Horace declares that his monument to himself will be more durable than bronze and higher than the pyramids. As T. E. Page noted in his commentary, aere can suggest not only bronze tablets, but also commemorative statuary, although tablets seems more to the fore here, given the reference to monumentum As for the pyramids, they are a fine example of grandiloquent architecture, but of a kind which is nevertheless subject to the destructive natural forces from which Horace exempts his own commemoration.

Commentators have generally been content to cite parallels for the phrase iucunda uoluptas at Propertius 1.10.3 without drawing attention to an interesting resonance which it may evoke

On his way to convey Jupiter's rebuke to Aeneas, Mercury passes by his maternal grandfather Atlas, a mountain vividly personified as an old man with snowy beard/frozen rivers running down his chin (4.249–51). Here he pauses, then flings himself into the waves (4.253–4):

Many readers of Mynors' commentary must have been mildly puzzled by the last sentence of his note on 491: ‘Some sensitive modern ears catch an echo of the Homeric emathoeis, “sandy” and haima, “blood”’. In commenting on the same line, Thomas is less negative, but mentions only the blood, not the sand: ’Haemi … campos: given the force of pinguescere … V. surely intends a gloss—“plains of blood” (cf. Gr. haima)‘.2 He provides no further guidance as to who might be the owner of Mynors’ ‘sensitive modern ears’. For the record, the answer is George Doig, and his case is far stronger than Mynors' dismissive comment might be taken to imply.3 The first point in favour is (as Doig says) the inaccuracy of Vergil's geographic reference.

In his influential work Unpoetische Wörter, B. Axelson mentions sane as one of the words used freely in prose but generally avoided in verse.1 He briefly discusses its occurrences in poetry. A closer look at these occurrences offers some insight into the manner in which Roman poets employed words usually associated with prose writing or everyday speech, while raising some interesting questions about the accepted text of a passage in the Aeneid and the style of Ovid's Heroides 16–21.

Ovid begins his overtly programmatic Amores 2.1 with the claim that Cupid, who had previously interfered with the poet's attempt to write an epic (1.1), has once again ordered him to reject epic subjects (this time, a Gigantomachia) and to compose a book of decadent love-elegies instead. Faced with this new task, the poet dutifully proceeds to warn that his elegiac verses are not suitable for the prudish but hopes that they will be read by lovers. Among the prospective readers are young men who, like Ovid himself, have been shot by Cupid's arrow:

It is a characteristic of Ovid's Heroides for each epistle implicitly to establish the dramatic time, context and motive for its composition by the particular heroine to whom it is attributed. In this way the poet is able to exploit the tension between the heroine's inevitably circumscribed awareness of the development of her story and the superior information which can be deployed by a reader acquainted with the mythical tradition or master-text which dictates what is actually going to follow: Penelope hands over a letter to a man whom the reader familiar with Homer can identify as Ulysses even if she cannot, Ariadne wonders whether Naxos is infested with tigers at a moment shortly before Dionysus and his tiger-driven chariot will arrive.

In telling the story of Tereus, Procne, and Philomela (Met. 6.401–674), Ovid transformed tragedy—the Tereus of Sophocles1—into epic. The result was a narrative that followed the tragic plot but with a very different presentation. For example, Ovid incorporated into his episode events from the play's prologue, such as the marriage of Procne and Tereus (426ff.), the birth of Itys (433ff), and the voyage of Tereus to Athens (444ff.). In addition, he brought offstage action into the limelight, including the violation of Philomela (549ff.), the slaughter of Itys (636ff.), and the metamorphoses of Tereus and the sisters (667ff). Finally, he explicated innermost thoughts, like the lust of Tereus (455ff.) and the rage of Procne (581ff.)— emotions whose external manifestations would have been clear in performance, but whose effects the reader perceives from the inside out. So sequential and immediate a treatment owes much to the shift from one genre to the other.

The wine referred to in the second line of the epigram was produced near Verona, at the foot of the Rhaetian Alps. It was well regarded by most and was a favourite of the Emperor Augustus: for references see Mynors at Verg. G. 2.96 and my note at Mart. 14.100.2. It appears, however, to have undue prominence in this poem, supposedly about the earthenware drinking vessels which, presumably, were manufactured in the same area.

There is also the question of why Martial refers to Verona in such a circumlocutory way. Is he merely following a well established elegiac/epigrammatic convention in associating Verona with Catullus (cf. e.g. Ovid, Am. 3.15.7 and Mart. 1.7.2), or does his circumlocution here have any particular point?

Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.243–4:

nec tu iam poteras enectum pondere terrae

tollere, nympha, caput, corpusque exsangue iacebas.

R. J. Tarrant has remarked that ‘Latin poets from Ovid onward...felt an almost irresistible urge to mention the Isthmus of Corinth wherever possible’,2 and A. E. Housman admitted to a similar, though less urgent, inclination to introduce the city of Corinth into the passage quoted: ‘inter 295 et 296 excidisse uidetur uersus cuius clausula fuerit Corinthus’. Corinth would, of course, be very much at home in this list of depraved and wealthy (or formerly wealthy) Greek cities, and would suitably head the list.

Tacitus gives lavish treatment to the mutiny of the German legions in the aftermath of Augustus' death in a.d. 14 and provides an excellent centrepiece in a speech (given in oratio recta) by Germanicus to the troops of the Lower German army at Ara Ubiorum (Cologne). After the harsh treatment of a delegation from Rome, Germanicus responded to requests that he send Agrippina and Caligula to safety. As the family was leaving the camp the troops surrounded Germanicus, who moved them to repentance by his speech. Previous writers have already discussed particular debts to Livy and to Virgil, but none has, I think, pointed to the most likely source for Germanicus' opening remarks: ‘Non mihi uxor aut filius patre et re publica cariores sunt…’. Goodyear dismisses the sentiment as a variety of the ‘commonplace’. that the state was more important than the individual and refers the reader to Béranger. However, none of these passages is as close or as pointed as the examples I consider below.

These famous words are generally taken to refer to the weighing of the dead Carthaginian's ashes, and I have no quarrel with that. However, I should like to bring i into the debate the commonly used Roman steelyard balance, the statera. This J bronze balance has an eccentric fulcrum. The scale pan is suspended from the shorter arm and the counterweight hangs from a loop which is free to move along a r graduated scale on the longer arm of the fulcrum.

Ann. 11.11: nam is quoque (Domitian) edidit ludos saecularis iisque intentius adfui sacerdotio quindecimvirali praeditus ac tune praetor; quod non iactantia refero sed quia collegio quindecimvirum antiquitus ea cura et magistratus potissimum exequebantur officia caerimoniarum.

In CQ 46 (1996), 591–5, I proposed an emendation to Plutarch, de Stoic, rep. 1048DE which included the adoption of the variant ἰσχύουσιν (found in X1 and F1) for the ἰσχύν otherwise attested in the MSS.

In CQ 45 (1995), 547–50, S. J. Harrison and M. Winterbottom (hereafter H-W) propose a series of emendations to the text of the recently discovered passage of Donatus which contains his commentary on Aen. 6.1–157. I offer some further emendations (bold figures refer to lines of Virgil).