¹ Early editors report immundos… pedes as the reading of Heinsius’ liber Colotianus and Vaticanus primus, which were printed editions containing some form of the collations that originate with Franciscus Puccius; cf. Butrica, J. L., ‘Pontanus, Puccius, Pocchus, Petreius, and Propertius’, Res Publica Litterarum 3 (1980), 5–9 Google Scholar, at n. 16. Hanslik's edition reports it as read by Venice, Bibl. Marc. 4208, which I am unable to consult; but I can report that the closely related Ottob. lat. 2003 agrees with the archetype.

² The punctuation printed here may fairly be called the modern vulgate, since it appears in both OCTs, both Loebs, and Fedeli's Teubner (Hanslik's Teubner, like Schuster's, offers a variation in which a colon is placed at the end of 74), not to mention Butler and Barber, and Camps; I have traced it back through Palmer's 1880 edition to Hertzberg, though in these editions dixere… patres is set off with dashes rather than with the parentheses that seem to appear first in Phillimore's OCT. Paldam (Halle, 1827) and Carutti (The Hague, 1869) also set off dixere… patres but began a new sentence at annua. Lachmann (Leipzig, 1816) used dashes to set off both dixere… patres and hie primus… esse as parenthetical, a highly unnatural punctuation that nevertheless was adopted by Müller, Baehrens, Postgate, and D'Arbela (in his second edition [Berlin, 1829] Lachmann put dixere… esse within a single parenthesis, with a colon after patres). I assume that Lachmann wanted dies to be available for festus to modify, but festoque remissus in 83 shows that festus can stand on its own in the sense ‘holiday’—a usage not recognized by the OLD. None of the dozen or so systems of punctuation that I have seen manages to avoid the awkwardness of run-on sentences or multiple parentheses.

³ Goold, G. P., ‘Paralipomena Propertiana’, HSCP 94 (1992), 287–320 Google Scholar, at 312–13. (I owe this reference to the journal's reader.)

⁴ For these ‘naming constructions’ and their connection with learned Alexandrian poetry, see O'hara, J. J., True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (Ann Arbor, 1996)Google Scholar, § 2.6, ‘Naming Constructions as Etymological Signposts’ (cf. 79, ‘The naming construction as etymological signpost may be looked on as similar to, or perhaps even part of, another phenomenon: what has been called the “Alexandrian footnote”, or “illusory footnote”’). In his treatment of the Virgilian examples, O'Hara does not always detect an etymological allusion, but seems inclined to attribute this to the defective state of our knowledge. If such a ‘footnote’ is present here, it probably concerns the controversy over Parilia versus Palilia, in which case Propertius (if our manuscripts can be trusted here) is probably asserting that Parilia is the original ancient name (as dixere patres implies) and is thus the ‘true’ or ‘correct’ form. Festus and Charisius record both Palilia and Parilia and offer a derivation for each, the former from the goddess (or god) Pales, the latter from partus, either de partu Iliae (as asserted at Solin. 1.19 as well as by Charisius) or because pro partu pecoris eidem [i.e. Pales] sacra fiebant (Paul. Fest. p. 222M; Chans. GLK 1.58.21–2). Two other scholars clearly do champion Parilia as the correct form, though in different ways. Marius Victorinus flatly denies the derivation from Pales (and thus the ‘correctness’ of the form Palilia) and asserts that Parilia is the correct form because the word derives from the fact that eo tempore omnia sata… parturiant pariantque (6.25.23). The commentary of ‘Probus’ on V. G. 3.1 offers a ‘compromise’ position in which Parilia is the correct form but nonetheless derives from Pales and represents an original ‘Paliria’ altered through metathesis. It is impossible to be certain whether Propertius held either of these views, but it is worth noting that Ovid in his Fasti implicitly gives wholehearted support to the derivation from Pales by invoking the goddess and avoiding even a suggestion of the derivation from partus (a deliberate choice, surely, given his willingness elsewhere to consider alternative derivations and explanations).

⁵ For a comparable case in which the annotation non potuit legi exemplar was combined with the words uetus est tutela draconis at Prop. 4.8.3 and turned into a hexameter of sorts in Naples, Bibl. Naz. IV.F.20, see Butrica, J. L., The Manuscript Tradition of Propertius. Phoenix Supplementary volume 17 (Toronto, 1984), 57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ Deliciis was known to the earliest editors as a reading cited by Beroaldus. For Ottob. lat. 1514 and Regio, see Butrica (n. 5), 1.25, 137–8; and, for the μ mss, 135–8.

⁷ For other examples of ‘neutral’ lautitia(e) cf. Col. 9.1.1; Petr. 21.6, 32.1, 73.5; Ap. M. 5.8.4.

⁸ See also Col. 9.1.1, where it is stated that ferae pecudes… modo lautitiis ac uoluptatibus dominorum seruiunt.

⁹ Cf. Col. 8.16.3 (lautitiae locupletium maria ipsa Neptunumque clauseruni); V. Max. 2.4.6 (crescentibus opibus secuta lautitia est), 2.6.1 (lautitiam et immodicos sumptus), 4.3.2, 9.1.4 (the last two making a contrast with [prisca] continentia); Sen. Dial. 10.12.5, Ep. 74.14 (where epularum lautitia is counted ex his hominem inescantibus et uili uoluptate ducentibus), 114.9; Plin. Nat. 36.45 (nee lautitiae causa—nondum enim ista intelligebatur); cf. also Suet. J.C. 46.1 and Aug. 71.1 for the contrast between Julius Caesar, munditiarum lautitiarumque studiosissimus (with numerous examples of his extravagance in dining, even while travelling), and Augustus, who displayed lautitiarum inuidia in retaining nothing of the Egyptian royal treasure beyond a single murrhine cup.

¹⁰ Like diuitiiis, madent is often explained metaphorically, usually as equivalent to abundant or a similar word, while translators often have the tables ‘flow’ (Goold; cf. Camps ad loc.) with rich fare. Earlier scholars offered bolder explanations. ‘The food is cooked, not dry’ according to Butler and Barber, as though Propertius might have thought it necessary to indicate that Roman peasants did not eat their dinners raw. Paley thought that it meant ‘with more oil in them than usual’, while Ramsay thought of ‘the richer dishes and dainties of the feast-day, which to meet the Italian taste would be well soused in oil’.

¹¹ For burranica see Paul. Fest. p. 37M, burranica potio appellatur lacte mixtum sapa, a rufo colore. quern bwrum uocant; and for the consumption at the Parilia of a combination of these ingredients (presumably burranica) see Ov. Fast. 4.780 lac niueum potes purpureamque sapam (where purpuream alludes to the source of the color rufus which gave burranica its name). Propertius’ choice of lautitiae in reference to something wet perhaps hints at its derivation from lautus or at the derivation from lauatio mentioned at Paul. Fest. p. 1 17M.

¹² Varro apparently recorded in his De Vita Populi Romani that sapa, like other sweet wine derivatives, was favoured by the elderly ladies of early Rome, but in the late Republic and early Empire its chief uses were in preserving or storing food and as the ‘spoonful of sugar’ that helped medicine go down; nor does it figure in the recipes of Apicius. The closest that anything in our sources comes to the flavour of burranica is probably the caseus mollis ex sapa served by Trimalchio (Petr. 66.7), though even here the sapa seems to be a preservative vehicle, not an ingredient.