In an earlier article in Classical Quarterly, S. J. Harrison explored the varying frequency of hexameter-endings of the type discordia taetra, where a noun that ends in short a is followed by its epithet with the same termination. It appears from this that while most pre-Augustan poets allow a fairly high frequency of such verse-endings (e.g. Lucretius 1:130, Catullus 1:204), some Augustan poets and their imitators show a distinct tendency to avoid them (e.g. Vergil, Georgics 1:547), while some almost exclude them altogether (e.g. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1:4999, Statius, Thebaid 1:1948). The hexameters of elegiac poetry might be subject to the same restriction; the following are figures for elegy from Catullus to Martial.

‘et quid agam?’ ‘rogat! en saperdas aduehe Ponto, castoreum, stuppas, hebenum, tus, lubrica Coa. 135 tolle recens primus piper et sitiente camelo. uerte aliquid; iura.’

In 1. 136, Clausen's’ adoption of et from the best manuscripts would warm the heart of A. E. Housman, who takes exception to the e, ex, and ec of other editors (i.e. Jahn, Owen, and Nettleship): ‘Spell it as you will, the preposition is not natural: the camel carried the pepper on his back, not in any of his numerous stomachs; and it does not follow that we ought to say “tollere piper e camelo” because there exist such phrases as “desilire ex equo”.’ Instead, he takes both primus and sitiente camelo as adverbial adjuncts to the predicate which (diough not parallel in form) are parallel in force and therefore united by the conjunction et.

How any editor of Plautus can become one of the slash-cut-and-carve critics I cannot understand. The fair garden-beds of Plautus are scored all over with the hoof-prints of the reckless emender. Take this line of the Poenulus for example. Hanno gets a sight of his two long-lost daughters and is surprised to find how they have grown:

Haecine meae sunt filiae?

Quantae e quantillis iam sunt factae!

His would-be son-in-law, not a very refined youth, says with a smile:

Scin quid est?

Thraecae sunt: in celonem sustolli solent.

The text of Quintus Curtius benefited greatly from Conrad Müller's edition of 1954 (Munich, with translation by H. Schönfeld). In particular, his thorough investigation of Curtius' rhythms enabled him to settle many hitherto doubtful points. Problems remain, unsolved or undetected. In Curtius, as in other prose texts, scribal omissions are a prolific source of corruption, sometimes productive of interpolation. Most of the following notes postulate corruptions of this type.

Two kindred glossaries, Affatim and the Second Amplonian, have been shown (by Professor Lindsay in the Classical Quarterly XI. 185 sqq.) to derive their materials mainly from the Abstrusa and Abolita glossaries, but partly also from Virgil marginalia. This Virgil thread is most clearly seen in the I-section of Affatim. The Affatim compiler tells us that the exemplar (from which he drew most of his material) had lost four leaves at this point: ‘Here the exemplar lacks four leaves in the H–I portion’ (C.G.L. IV. 524, 45–46). We find the following unmistakable Virgil batches:

Affatim 525, 41 sqq. Infandum: inenarrandum, nee loquendum (e.g. Aen. 1, 251); Inpar: inaequalis uiribus (e.g. Aen. 1, 475); Iamdudum: iam pridem, iam olim (e.g. Aen. 1, 580; also C.G.L. IV. 88, 40); In arce: in excelso (e.g. Aen. 3, 531); Infabricata: inperfecta (Aen. 4, 400); Iam uertitur: iam transit (Aen. 5, 626); <lnualidum>: iam ualidum minus, minus fortem (Aen. 5, 716); Imago: uultus (e.g. Aen. 6, 695); In iaculis: in armis, in telis (Aen. 5, 37).

Just about every odd year in the early fifth century B.C. has been proposed as the date of the Nemean victory of Pytheas from Aegina, celebrated in Pindar's Fifth Nemean and Bacchylides' thirteenth ode. Scholars have attempted to date both odes with the help of Isthmian 6 and 5, which celebrate victories of a member of the same family and the latter of which at 48ff. refers to Salamis as a recent event. Various interpretations of the victory catalogues in I. 6 and 5 have led to various dates for N. 5 and B. 13. The fullest analysis of the material is that by Severyns, who argues that N. 5 and B. 13 must be at least seven years earlier than I. 5. In his conclusion (pp. 50–51), however, he still suggests three possible dates for N. 5 and B. 13: 487, 489, and 485 B.C., in what he considers to be the order of likelihood.

In his admirable commentary, Jeffrey Henderson notes the significance of posture and of physical setting. He does not remark that the statue of Leaina near to which Lysistrata and Kalonike are standing on the Akropolis was intimately tied to the obscure story of the later years in the Athenian tyranny. With minor variations of detail or colour the story was that Leaina, a hetaira beloved of Harmodios or Aristogeiton, had been tortured by Hippias after the murder of Hipparchos but, brave girl, had preferred to die than say yes, or indeed say anything. She bit out her tongue. The Athenians set up a bronze lioness, the work of Amphikrates, to commemorate her martyrdom.

In the best Menippean tradition the De Consolatione Philosophiae of Boethius is peppered with quotations from different authors, most notably from the works of Homer. The quotations are generally spoken by Philosophy, and are used to articulate the narrative, e.g. at 1. 4 we find a line from Iliad 1. 363 whose application to the f present situation is immediately comprehensible, and would have been appreciated by the average reader. Another similar quotation is that of Iliad 12. 176: ⋯ργαλ⋯oν δ⋯ με ταȗτα Өε⋯ν ὣς π⋯ντ' ⋯γoρε⋯ειν at 4. 6. 53. Such uses are very simiar to what one, finds in the Apocolocyntosis of Seneca, albeit there used for comic effect. There are also snippets of popular wisdom in the form of an old proverb – though it is one with Menippean associations – and a Pythagorean maxim.

Opinion has long been divided as to the exact interpretation of the phrase de tenero ungui, the Latin version of a Greek proverbial expression The competing explanations are:

A. ‘from the depth of her being’, penitus.

B. ‘from her earliest childhood’, ab infantia; that is, presumably, from the time when the nails were still soft like those of a very young baby (though cf. E. W. Fay, A.J.Ph. xxix [1908], 205).

In a recent paper Mr. Balsdon has condemned the ‘political barrenness of Cicero's thought and the thought of his political friends’. The speech pro Sestio, we are told, with its stress on otium, implies ‘an acceptance of the existing political and social conditions, of what Cicero describes as otiosae dignitatis … fundamenta (98), which the principes must protect and defend’. Defence of these was ‘a placid acceptance of the existing régime’ and the appeal for otium ‘the retort of Maître Pangloss that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds’.

At Petron. Sat. 48.4 Trimalchio makes a famous boast about owning three libraries:

Priscian tells us in his dedicatory introduction that he took his material from many Latin sources—collectis etiam omnibus fere quaecunque necessaria nostrorum quoque inueniuntur artium commentariis grammaticorum. This can hardly mean that he owed everything to his predecessors. At any rate it is unlikely that he copied all his illustrative quotations from earlier grammarians. The problem is one which, for our purpose, does not need to be solved. We can make Priscian responsible for every quotation (unless, of course, we suspect that copyists have had a hand in introducing variations), because he had the opportunity of correcting or commenting on such borrowings as he incorporated in his work. If he could acquiesce in a garbled version of a line, we must take the fact into account in appraising his value as a witness to the text of Terence. And we must assume that the Terence text of his day did not differ from the versions which he quotes. Nowhere does he hint at a discrepancy. This assumption, it will be understood, has reference only to the points of diction for which we are tolerably sure that we have Priscian's attestation, and not to minor details which did not interest him at the moment, and in which we can prove that he was far from conscientious.

post hos elefantorum fulgentium formidandam speciem et truculentos hiatus uix mentes pauidae perferebant; ad quorum stridorem odoremque et insuetum aspectum magis equi terrebantur. (Amm. Marc. 25. 1.14.)

COKNELISSEN, Mnemosyne, xiv (1886), 280, comments: ‘Non intellego fulgentium. Minime audiendus est Wagnerus, qui fulgentes elephantes dictos esse contendit ob cutem glabram. Corrigendum puto ingentium. Porro non satis intellego quomodo hiatus elefantorum militibus pauorem incutere potuerit. Wagnerus, qui omnia con-coquere solet, interpretatur proboscidas. Nescio an scripserit A. barritus.’

This article adopts a revisionist approach to the intertextual relationship between Statius’ Thebaid and Silius Italicus’ Punica, two contemporary Flavian epics that interact with one another (first century a.d.). As such, this is not only an excellent illustration of intertextuality in action but also a prime example of how texts can be read in either direction depending on which takes precedence. Since both epics overlap in time, it is precisely the difficulty in establishing the direction of influence between the two poets that opens up texts in creative ways by allowing further readings. Of course, such an overlap calls for a shift in power from the author onto the reader in constructing meaning in text. However, textual evidence only allows us to do so much. It is my contention that Statius could not have interacted with Silius’ Punica beyond a.d. 92, which is the year when he published his Thebaid. This is also the year when Silius is thought to have composed Book 12 of the Punica. Therefore, Statius could only effectively engage with Silius up to Punica Book 12, it seems, while Silius carried on writing the remainder of his seventeen-book-long epic. Still, there is ample material from Statius’ Thebaid and Silius’ Punica Books 1–12 to explore in terms of mutual influence. A critical trend in Flavian scholarship has produced a list of parallels between the two epics showing Silius’ potential borrowing from Statius and vice versa. As recently discussed in Ripoll's study, the most significant parallel inviting close comparison is Hannibal's siege of Rome in Punica Book 12 and Capaneus’ assault on Thebes in Thebaid Book 10. In this article, I would like to return to these two specific episodes and read them alongside each other. The purpose of the reading is to evaluate whether this single interaction changes the model of how we think about the intertextual activity between Silius and Statius, before the final publication of the Thebaid in a.d. 92, when Statius could still revise, amend and polish in the light of the Punica.

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.

Manilius begins his first book with a brief summary of the early history of astronomy, leading to a sketch of the rise of civilization. In the following passage, printed as it is found in one of the principal manuscripts M, he describes the invention of language, agriculture and navigation:

1.85 tune et lingua suas accepit barbara leges,

et fera diuersis exercita frugibus arua,

et uagus in caecum penetrauit nauita pontum,

fecit et ignotis inter commercia terris.