Category Archives: General

I’m Back – or Soon Will Be

I thought I should avoid going a whole year without posting, so here’s a quick note exactly one year after my last post. I’m working on a substantive post, advertising a revision of my text of Heroides 1, which should … Continue reading

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More Teaching Texts: 12 Martial, 1 Seneca

I have just uploaded Twelve Easy Epigrams of Martial (link): probably the easiest dozen epigrams of Martial, with notes for sight-reading, and an introductory page explaining how to use them. I hope they will prove useful to those teaching Latin … Continue reading

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Happy Birthday, Ovid: with print-your-own-page edition

In honor of Ovid’s 2062nd birthday, I have uploaded a text of the birthday poem he wrote for himself in exile, Tristia III.13 (link). It’s a suitably depressing text for a time of plague and isolation, and may provide a … 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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A Crucial Difference for Some

While I’m uploading pictures, here are a couple of statues I saw at the West End Antique Mall in Richmond, Virginia last Saturday: They’re roughly half life-sized and priced at $562.50 each, though WEAM will usually knock off 10% just … Continue reading

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Still in Business!

The most exciting and unexpected thing I saw in Dublin had nothing to do with classics: Tower Records is still in business in Ireland, and stuffed with interesting CDs and DVDs as well as vinyl LPs. I only had time … Continue reading

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A Missing Joke in Ovid?

Unable to communicate her plight to her father and sisters in any other way, boviform Io writes a message in the dust with her hoof (Met. 1.649-50): littera pro uerbis, quam pes in puluere duxit, corporis indicium mutati triste peregit. … Continue reading

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A ‘Calemphaton’ in Horace, C. 4.12.8?

One of the several meanings of cacemphaton (also deformitas, Greek κακέμφατον) is an inadvertent obscenity found at the junction of two words. As H. Lausberg puts it (Handbook of Literary Rhetoric, Brill 1998, § 1070), “A special kind of amphibolia, … Continue reading

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A Strange Ambiguity in Horace’s Torquatus Ode (4.7)

One of the many memorable couplets in C. 4.7 is 19-20: cuncta manus avidas fugient heredis, amico     quae dederis animo. Has anyone noted the odd change of meaning when we come to the last word? Up until then, it looks … Continue reading

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The Structure of Tacitus’ Annales: Three Hexads or Two ‘Ogdoads’?

In 2000, I gave a lecture on Tacitus, titled as above, at the University of Durham. It was well-received, and a previous version of the main argument has even been mentioned in a footnote (A. J. Woodman, Tacitus Reviewed, 237 … Continue reading

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How Many Hetaerae? Pindaric Arithmetic in the Skolion to Xenophon of Corinth

Here is the third and last of the Pindarica that have been lying half-finished in my files for many years. The PDF is here.

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Dammae Damnatae: Two Notes on Martial 4.74

The fifth of my Martial papers for August 2017, titled as above, is here in PDF form. This is the second to explain a conjecture on Book IV first web-published in 2007.

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Martial 4.49: Find the Missing Joke

I have just uploaded the second of my Martial papers for August 2017, “One, Two, Three, . . . Where’s the Fourth? Martial 4.49” The PDF is here. This is a new conjecture, not in the 2007 text of Martial … Continue reading

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Books For Sale

A few months ago (link), I found that I had somehow ended up with two copies each of five different Classics books, and offered the spares for sale, selling two. Now I find that I still have nine duplicates, including … Continue reading

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A is for Accidence: Juvenal 14.214

Just posted: a note on Juvenal, titled as above. The PDF is here. Comments welcome.

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There’s More than One Kind of Filthy Lefty: Catullus 12.1-3

Just posted: a note on Catullus, titled as above. The PDF is here. Help with the final question would be much appreciated: perhaps pictorial representations of convivia will answer it.

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Peripatetic Conjectures

I try to walk an hour a day, and find that memorizing verse is an excellent way to pass the time: usually Latin verse, most often Horace or Catullus. I can’t keep more than a dozen or so texts in … Continue reading

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Proleptic Mountains? (Horace, I. 16.28)

Just uploaded: an exegetical note on ‘Proleptic Mountains’ in Horace, Iambi (Epodi) 16: PDF.

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Books for Sale

I have somehow ended up with two copies each of five different Classics books, and am offering the spares for sale at competitive prices (a few dollars less than the lowest price for the same title in comparable condition on … Continue reading

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New for 2017: Cedo Alteram ePrompter

I have just uploaded a tool – a website – for memorizing passages of Latin literature, the Cedo Alteram ePrompter. The test module may be seen here, using Horace, Carmina 2.7 as a sample text. The site works in Firefox, … Continue reading

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