Category Archives: Latin Literature

Should an OCT Have a Table of Contents?

Some Oxford Classical Texts really need a table of contents. Perhaps most of all Ausonius, whose works are numerous, of widely-varying length and interest, and numbered differently in just about every edition. I suspect that few Latinists have ever had … Continue reading

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New Texts: Albinovanus Pedo and Cornelius Severus

I haven’t posted anything in almost three months, partly because half the site was not working for six weeks (December 16-January 28) and I could not figure out why (a server move and PHP ‘upgrade’ made my main text database … Continue reading

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Lucaneum (not a Sausage) for Lucan’s birthday

For Lucan’s 1980th birthday – already over in the Eastern Hemisphere – I have written up a note on the text of 1.20: link to PDF.

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Claudian’s Orrery – 3-column display of critical texts

It has been obvious for many years that an on-line text with an apparatus criticus should put it to the right of the text, since the bottom of the page may be hundreds of lines away, and a line-by-line apparatus … Continue reading

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Claudianean Revisions

I have begun to revise and complete my web-text of Claudian, first uploaded in 2004 (link in right margin). So far, I have added curly quotation marks to In Rufinum I, the only text that lacked them, corrected four typographical … Continue reading

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John Owen 9.53

Just uploaded: a conjecture on an author from the age of print: John Owen (Ioannes Audoenus) the Welsh epigrammatist. This particular couplet was first published in 1613. (This is not my first attempt to emend an oft-printed text: I will … Continue reading

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Crazy Quilt

First up: some comments on the Poems without Poets conference at Trinity College, Dublin two weeks ago. There was a paper by Maria Teresa Galli, “The Vergiliocentones minores and the patchwork tragedy Medea of the Latin Anthology: poems without a … Continue reading

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When Did Ovid Die?

For Ovid’s 2059th birthday, here’s a note on his death-year. It could use some footnotes, but this should do for a funeral offering. We’re all celebrating commemorating the 2000th anniversary of the death of Ovid this year, but the date … Continue reading

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Martial 8.6.8

I have just written a textual note (half a page – 185 words) on a word in Martial 8.6 – one of his catalogue poems. Here is the link to the PDF. As always, comments will be very much appreciated, … Continue reading

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A Martial Acronym in Ennius?

    I just reserved a room at a cheap motel in West Chester, PA so I can go to the Ennius conference at the University of Pennsylvania this Friday and Saturday. I hope I can find a parking place near campus: … Continue reading

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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Chicken (Pliny, Ep. 7.21)

(Note: a general bibliography for this and my other Pliniana will soon be uploaded and linked, and this note removed.)     Pliny’s Epistle 7.21 seems trivial at first. It is short enough to quote in full:(1) C. Plinius Cornuto suo s. … Continue reading

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“We’ve Made It Legal, but We Can’t Make It Right” (Martial 5.75)

    Any problems in this little poem are exegetical – there are no significant variants: Quae legis causa nupsit tibi Laelia, Quinte,     uxorem potes hanc dicere legitimam. As a punch-line, the pentameter, particularly the last word, seems rather flat. I suspect … Continue reading

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A Different Kind of Astronomical Conjunction (Pliny, Ep. 1.3.1)

    Pliny opens the third letter of his collection, to Caninius Rufus, with a series of questions about the latter’s luxurious villa in Comum – I mark the clauses I am most interested in (1.3.1):(1) Quid agit Comum, tuae meaeque deliciae? … Continue reading

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Female Turpitude Meets Male Torpitude (Catullus 11.18)

    Daniél Kiss’s Catullus Online: An Online Repertory of Conjectures on Catullus is a wonderful resource, which I have found complete and accurate in whatever I have checked, but rather depressing viewed at length. Only six of the sixty-eight lines in … Continue reading

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A Dumb Question about Animals (Pliny, Ep. 1.20.5)

    In the course of a long discussion of rhetoric addressed to Tacitus, Pliny argues that size matters in judging orations, with an extended analogy from living creatures (Epistulae 1.20.4-5):(1) Et hercule ut aliae bonae res ita bonus liber melior est … Continue reading

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Casaubon – and Cicero?

At Laudator Temporis Acti, Michael Gilleland quotes a witticism of Casaubon. It looks to me like a far more succinct variation on a story Cicero tells in his De Legibus – or rather has his character Atticus tell, since it’s … Continue reading

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Curculio 6: Two Adjectives in Seneca’s Agamemnon

How’s that for a boring title? As a continuation of my experiment with publishing original scholarship on this site, I have just uploaded an eight-page PDF containing two conjectures on the text of Seneca’s Agamemnon, titled as above (link). (I … Continue reading

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Announcement: Juvenal Reformatted

Some time between 1998 and 2000 – I really should have kept better records – I uploaded a complete on-line text of Juvenal’s Satires, with brief apparatus criticus and some original conjectures. Though it has not been updated since (I … Continue reading

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Best Match of Editor’s Name and Subject?

I’m torn between the Kiss Catullus – the online Catullus edited by Daniel Kiss (link) – and the Hankey Othello (link). Can anyone think of a third? Possibly the worst match between performer and subject (onomastically, I mean – he … Continue reading

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Curculio 1: Silius Italicus: Why Seventeen Books?

The unusual length of Silius Italicus’ Punica has often caused puzzlement. Antony Augoustakis discusses the point in the first chapter of the recent Brill companion to Silius. He credits Michael von Albrecht with noting that the number of books “corresponds … Continue reading

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