Monthly Archives: March 2016

Plain and Simple: Marcus Argentarius IV G-P (A.P. 5.89)

Posted on Sunday: March 13, 2016 by Michael Hendry

(Note: I hope someone will let me know if the Greek comes out wrong, and if so what browser and operating system were in use. On my screen, it looks fine except that acute accents not combined with breathings are … Continue reading →

Posted in Curculio: Greek, Greek Epigram | Tagged | 2 Comments

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

Posted on Saturday: March 12, 2016 by Michael Hendry

(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)

Posted on Friday: March 11, 2016 by Michael Hendry

    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)

Posted on Thursday: March 10, 2016 by Michael Hendry

    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)

Posted on Wednesday: March 9, 2016 by Michael Hendry

    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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“I’ll put her to her pension”: A Mad World, My Masters I.ii.66

Posted on Tuesday: March 8, 2016 by Michael Hendry

One of the more difficult passages in Middleton’s play is the soliloquy of Harebrain (aka Shortrod) as the “pure virgin” (actually a courtesan) fetches his wife (I.ii.62-69): This is the course I take; I’ll teach the married man A new … Continue reading →

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

Posted on Monday: March 7, 2016 by Michael Hendry

    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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