¹ Kenney, E. J. (ed.). P. Ovidi Nasonis Amores, Medicamina Faciei Femineae, Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris (Oxford, 1994 ²)Google Scholar. References to ‘Brandt’ are to Brandt, P. (ed.), P. Ovidi Nasonis de arte amatoria libri tres (Leipzig, 1902Google Scholar, reprinted Hildesheim, 1991), and are ad loc. unless otherwise specified.

² We will see that each of these possibilities is half right: the reference is indeed to the crocodile, but the text should probably be emended (though not to uestis), since a crocodile is not a fish.

³ Brandt (Anhang, 237–8) refers to ‘das Krokodil …, das allerdings in der Kosmetik eine ebenso wenig appetitliche, wie nicht unwichtige Rolle spielte’. As sources, he quotes Pliny (N.H. 28.108), Clement of Alexandria (Paed. 3.2.7.3), and Horace (Epod. 12.11, stercore fucatus crocodili). Galen's chapter Περ κπρου τν χερσαων κροκοδελων κα ψρων is more detailed than any of these: Τν δ; τν χερσαων κροκοδελων τούτων τν μικρν τε κα χαμαιρεπν κóπρον αιτρυΦ σα ιπεποιήκ ασιγυναĩκε ςαίςούκ ρκé σει τοίςἔντ ιμον ἂἂπποιςφαρμάκοις τοσούτοις οϋσιν λαμπρόν τε και τετανόν έργáασθαιτ όπ ερίτ όπ ρόσωπονδ έρμαπ ροστιθέασι δ' αủτοîς καί τήν τν κροκοδεíλων κóπρον (De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus 10.29 = 12.307.8–308.6 Kühn). I owe this reference to Poliziano's Miscellaneorum Centuria Secunda (Branca, V., Pastore Stocchi, M. (eds.), Florence, 1978), in which chapter 37, ‘Crocodilus’, is essentially a cosmetological commentary on A.A. 3.270: he does not consider the question whether a crocodile can be referred to as a fish. Poliziano wonders whether Ovid knew that the crocodile from which cosmetics were procured was not the crocodile κατ έξοχήν I would say that if he did, he did not care.

⁴ The clothing in the perpendicular passage is pulla, which would be considerably darker. Ovid uses purpureus pudor to allude to a blush in Am. 1.3.14, and we would expect rouge to produce roughly the same shade.

⁵ The meaning ‘touch (with a substance) so as to leave a trace, film, or sim.’ (OLD s.v. tangere 3 a) seems perfect for the application of most cosmetics, whether powder, liquid, or paste. On the other hand, Propertius (quoted just below) uses tingere, and Ovid may well be imitating him here. (The other conjectures, particularly cingat, seem to be designed to clarify the line as a reference to striped clothing, which is the point at issue.)

⁶ It may also be significant that Plautus (Men. 829) gives the tempora as the locus of a sickly green coloration, though no cosmetic remedy is mentioned.

⁷ Since the couplet is obscure and difficult rather than inane or repetitious, I take it that it is corrupt, not interpolated.

⁸ Although D'Arcy Thomson, W., A Glossary of Greek Fishes (Oxford, 1947)Google Scholar, discusses the identification (s.v. πρστις 219), he unfortunately provides no picture or detailed description, though these can be found in most modern encyclopedias. Doubts about the identification are possible. As Thomson notes, ‘a derivation from πρήθω to blow or spout, is also possible. In its Latin form pistrix (in which word Volksetymologie plays its part), the pristis was exaggerated into a fabulous sea-monster, and in no case, either in Greek or in Latin, is it clearly recognizable as the sawfish. It is likely enough that it means that fish in many cases, but, strictly speaking, the identification rests only on its name.’

⁹ The third Latin form, pistrix, can at least be ruled out for our passage, since the genitive is pistricis, and πρστις is found only in Greek.

¹⁰ In his edition of Manilius (London, 5 vols., 1903–30), A. E. Housman notes confusion of pristis/pistris with piscis at 1.356. He also refers to Germanicus 721, where all MSS. read piscis and pistris is Grotius' conjecture (improved to pristis by Schwartz), and to Ciris 451, where MSS. are divided among pistres, pestes, and pisces, and Barth conjectured pristes. Of course, confusion of pristis /pistris with piscis is particularly easy in astronomical contexts, where the constellation Pristis (= Cetus, ‘the Whale’, identified with Andromeda's monster) keeps company with the zodiacal Pisces and the Piscis Notius (or Austrinus). An interesting case is Albinovanus Pedo 6 (apud Sen. Mai. Suas. 1.15, ed. Hakanson, , Leipzig, 1989)Google Scholar, where two of the three principal MSS. corrupt pristis (ace. pi.) to pristinas. Though suppressed as unmetrical by most editors of the fragmentary poets, this points to pristis against pistris as Pedo's preferred form: the scribe has substituted the only common native Latin word beginning with prist, – for the unfamiliar Greek term.

¹¹ Another complication is that the meanings of the words overlap, since a pristis or pistris is a species of piscis, and may well be a pestis, too.

¹² Or even a tunny fish: cf. Day, John, God's conflict with the dragon and the sea: Echoes of a Canaanite myth in the Old Testament (University of Cambridge Oriental Publications 35, Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar, particularly Chapter 2, ‘The alleged naturalization of Leviathan and Behemoth’ (62–87).

¹³ The καμηλοπρδαλις does not seem quite so outrageous as the others, in that it combines the long neck (and then some) of the κμηλος with the spots of the πρδαλις However, even this name would give a very imprecise idea of the giraffe to someone who had never seen one.

¹⁴ Anonymous CXXVIII in Page, D. L., Further Greek Epigrams (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar, quoted from Aelian N.A. 10.40. As Page says, it is ‘presumably inscriptional’, and datable to the 320s, since it describes Alexander the Great's dedication of a rhinoceros horn at Delphi.

¹⁵ English seems to reserve similar whimsy for culinary terms such as Welsh rabbit, toad-inthe-hold, and pigs-in-blankets. The fact that Latin pristis, unlike English ‘sawfish’, does not have its fishness implied in its name would make the usage that much easier, though even in English ‘shellfish’ are not fish.

¹⁶ At first gland, Phariae…pestis might seem attractive. We have seen (n. 8 above) that pestis is often confused with pristis/pistris and piscis. However, the word is much commoner than pristis. and so much less likely to be corrupted. More important, the description of a crocodile as a Pharia pestis would be accurate but insufficiently precise: although the crocodile is undoubtedly Egyptian and a pestis, the reference of the nouns is not specifically aquatic or sawtoothed, and Pharia pestis might just as easily describe the hippopotamus or the asp—perhaps even the ibis, if revolting habits count for anything. Ovid's reference to crocodilian cosmetics is already obscure enough with pristis. No doubt one reason for the obscurity of the expression is to help disguise the fundamental unpleasantness of the subject of crocodile dung.

¹⁷ I wish to thank the editors for their help, particularly Stephen Heyworth for his suggestion about the meaning of uirgis and for convincing me that tempora was more likely than I had at first thought, among much other advice, welcome even when not heeded. I also wish to thank Spurgeon Baldwin, Kirk Summers, and Tatiana Summers for editorial advice, and Herbert Boschung, Jr. for help on the ichthyological side.