Here Horace gives warning to an adversary of his powers of literary attack, comparing himself with the great iambists Archilochus (‘Lycambae spretus infido gener’) and Hipponax (‘acer hostis Bupalo’). The general sense of the last two lines seems clear: ‘If someone attacks me (gifted as I am with the weapons of the iambist), shall I weep like a mere boy?’, i.e. ‘Am I not to take revenge?’

There is nothing that renders this punctuation and the standard understanding of these verses (i.e. ‘seu tollere seu ponere volt freta’) impossible. Parallels can certainly be found (e.g. Cat. 4.19; Prop. 2.26.33). It is however true that this ellipse of seu has no good parallel in the Odes and the two examples in the Satires (2.5.10; 2.8.16) are much easier to tolerate than the use here. Thus, it may be worth noting that a different view of the verse seems possible. Remove the comma from line 16 and take tollere with maior: ‘than whom there is no master of the Adriatic greater at raising or calming – if he desires – the waters.’ Seu then = vel si, as frequently. Horace has a particular affection for infinitives governed by adjectives (as in line 25 of this poem); Wickham provides a lengthy list at vol. 1, pp. 316–17. At Satire 2.3,313 minor is so used.

Further proof of Professor Kenney's assertion that in the case of prodelided est the syncopated form was written by Ovid as well as spoken (CQ 36 [1986], 524) is provided by Metamorphoses 15.426ff.

The manuscript version of this line, apart from a nonsensical variant tutus for bubus, is et Tiberis nostris advena bubus erat. The trouble here has been that scholars have taken advena to mean ‘stranger’, ‘foreigner’, ‘alien’, or German ‘fremd’. Clearly the sentence and Tiber was a stranger to our oxen makes no sense in the context, and for this reason many scholars have either produced strange translations (‘alien Tiber served our oxen’, Butler and Barber) or else have dabbled in dubious emendation (temptus Baehrens, tortus Postgate, Tuscus Havet in place of bubus).

These are the very last words of Eumolpus' testament. The editors all print them thus, but I suspect a hidden corruption in devoverint. The text may seem to have an acceptable meaning, but only on a superficial reading inattentive to the whole context. A certain exegetical discomfort becomes noticeable if the translations are compared: Ernout renders ‘maudire mon âme’, Ehlers in Müller's second and third editions translates ‘sie meinen letzten Atemzug herbeiwünschten’ (thus giving spiritus a strained translation as though it were extremus or ultimus spiritus), and Cesareo- Terzaghi's edition (under Pasquali's supervision) prefers to render with a nuance of the future ‘con quel cuore stesso con cui mi avranno maledetto l'anima’. Obviously, devovere is being understood as synonymous with exsecrari. This is an attested secondary meaning, ‘curse’, ‘execrate’, which developed from the technical religious one connected with the ritual of devotio. According to this interpretation, the captatores cursed the fact that Eumolpus, apparently a sick man on the verge of death, continued to live longer than they could reasonably have expected when they began to court him. But the expression does not seem adequate for conveying this meaning: instead, we would expect something like vitam meam devoverint or me et caput meum devoverint or, better, me ad mortem devoverint, or similarly explicit expressions.

Mart. 11.75 is a variation on the same theme and may serve as a commentary on 7.35. As it was not common to wear clothing in the bath, a Roman lady not wanting mentulam videre (11.75.4) should not have gone to a public bath, where all the nude males, including Martial and his slave (7.35.3–4), were definitely not spadones (11.75.6; cf. 7.35.6).

Hippomedon is stoutly defending the body of his fallen comrade Tydeus against a mass of Thebans who press him hard: there is a break in the attack allowing him to return fire while his allies Alcon and Idas with their troops come to his aid. It is grammatically possible that iaculantum could be taken with tela, but style and word order make this most unlikely.