Columella in his Res Rustica always speaks of the bailiff as the slave of the owner of the farm, but in his Preface he states that the owner sometimes sent a mercenarius to be bailiff, and this has by some scholars been taken to mean that a freeborn labourer could be appointed. Since such a possibility is not mentioned by Columella elsewhere or by any other Roman writer, it is probable that the term mercenarius in the Preface has been misunderstood. (...) Hired labourers in ancient Rome included slaves as well as freemen. (shrink)

My purpose is to compare the different explanations that have been offered of the expression propius periclo it timor. This is its context. Evander, king of Pallanteum, has decided to send cavalry under the command of his son Pallas to assist the Trojans and Etruscans in the war against Turnus. When a report spreads that the cavalry are about to set out, the mothers of the soldiers are alarmed. uota metu duplicant matres, propiusque periclo it timor et maior Martis iam (...) apparet imago. ‘The mothers redouble their vows in fear, fear goes closer to the danger, and the image of Mars appears greater.’ James Henry writes: ‘The women, who had previously … made vows, felt fear, and seen the image of war before them , now, when the war has thus come to their very door, … double their vows, feel a sharper fear, and see their picture, image, or idea of war larger than it was before. ‘But propius periclo it has been explained in other ways. Some think periclo dative, other ablative. Conington increases the confusion by citing the explanations of Heyne and Wagner as if they were compatible with his own translation. (shrink)

Juturna drives Turnus’ chariot now here now there, hoping to throw off Aeneas’ pursuit, but he follows the twisted circles of her course. Virgil compares her to a black hirundo flying through a rich man's house out into the colonnades and then round the pools or fishtanks. Hirundo can mean swallow, martin, or even swift. All these birds eat insects and air-borne spiders; they do not eat human food. The common swallow chiefly eats flies, and feeds the nestlings on flies; (...) it also eats wasps and bees. Its average prey size is much greater than the house martin's. Virgil's hirundo gathers pabula parua for the nestlings. W F. J. Knight in the Penguin translation writes ‘tiny scraps of food’; C. Day Lewis translates ‘crumbs of food’. If Virgil meant scraps of meat or crumbs of bread, stolen from the rich man's dinner table, then Virgil did not know what these birds eat. (shrink)