Category Archives: Exegesis

Dissertation Now On-Line

The University of Virginia library has (with my permission) placed my dissertation, “Problems of unity and design in Propertius II” (1990) on-line. It’s a bit half-baked, but I still think my conclusions are sound. Should you read it? The best … 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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Martial’s Gloomy Ethiopian (7.87)

I have just uploaded the third of my Martial papers for August 2017, titled as above. The PDF is here. Not a conjecture this time, but an exegetical footnote.

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Catullus 33: Helping Out in the Family Business?

I have just written an exegetical note (2 pages – 476 words) on Catullus 33 – one of the “few poems which for good reason are rarely read” left out of Fordyce’s edition. Rather than pasting in the whole note … 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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Scholastic Humor

In Martial: Select Epigrams (Cambridge ‘green and gold’, 2003), Lindsay and Patricia Watson include 4.87 (71 in their numeration): Infantem secum semper tua Bassa, Fabulle,     conlocat et lusus deliciasque uocat, et, quo mireris magis, infantaria non est.     ergo quid in … Continue reading

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