Juvenal mocks women, especially older women, who think that speaking Greek makes them more attractive; therefore, they use Greek terms of endearment. I have given the text according to Clausen’s OCT of Persius and Juvenal.Footnote ¹ At line 195 the reading relictis, transmitted by the manuscripts, is barely tolerable. If, as most scholars do,Footnote ² we interpret modo sub lodice relictis to mean ‘things lately left beneath the blanket’, the phrase modo … in turba is nonsensical, because, as Housman saw, saying ‘you use in public things lately left beneath the blanket’ is no more logical than saying ‘you play on the playground with the ball lately left at home’.Footnote ³ Housman proposed ferendis (‘you use in public things [sc. words] that are only endurable beneath the blanket’), a conjecture that he regarded as certainFootnote ⁴ and placed in the text. With this conjecture modo means ‘only’, not ‘lately’, and the uetula, who is about to turn eighty-six, ‘propterea inducitur quia iam nec Graece concumbit nec Latine, ut eius in ore impudica uideantur uocabula quae puellis ueneri habilibus forsitan condonari possint’.Footnote ⁵ Housman compared Mart. 10.68.5–8 κύριέ μου, μέλι μου, ψυχή μου congeris usque, | pro pudor! Hersiliae ciuis et Egeriae. | lectulus has uoces, nec lectulus audiat omnis, | sed quem lasciuo strauit amica uiro.Footnote ⁶

Three objections may be levelled at Housman’s conjecture:

1. 1. As pointed out by Watt and Delz,Footnote ⁷ if we set 6.195 aside, modo means nuper in seventeen of the other eighteen passages in which it occurs in Juvenal; Juvenal’s only instance of this word in the sense of solum is at 2.135 liceat modo uiuere, in which modo is postpositive, as is normal in Latin when it is used as an exclusive particle.Footnote ⁸

2. 2. Despite the ingenuity displayed by Housman in his attempt to explain the alleged corruption of ferendis to relictis (ferendis turns into ferelictis, because n is taken for li and d for ct; ferelictis is then miscorrected to relictis), his palaeographical justification is unconvincing. As Watt rightly remarked,Footnote ⁹ a more plausible emendation of relictis would be not a gerundive but another perfect participle.

3. 3. If we accept ferendis, Juvenal’s text sounds strangely indulgent towards the lascivious habit of using Greek for erotic endearments,Footnote ¹⁰ a habit that was associated with prostitutes (cf. Mart. 10.68). True, at line 191 Juvenal writes dones … ista puellis (‘you may allow such things in young girls’, that is, ‘one might perhaps forgive the fact that young girls use Greek on every occasion, concubitus included’), but the premise from which he starts is that Hellenomaniac matronae are unbearable and nauseating, regardless of their age (184–7 quaedam parua quidem, sed non toleranda maritis. | nam quid rancidius quam quod se non putat ulla | formosam nisi quae de Tusca Graecula facta est, | de Sulmonensi mera Cecropis?). It is therefore clear, in my opinion, that, when Juvenal says dones … ista puellis,Footnote ¹¹ he is not making any concession to a habit he considers intolerable but is merely employing a rhetorical trick to emphasize that elderly women who affect titillating Grecisms are more insufferable than young girls who behave in the same way. The context gives no hint that Juvenal regarded Greek terms of endearment as ‘things which are tolerable under the blanket’ (sub lodice ferenda).

The same three objections may be raised to Nisbet’s loquendis (‘you use in public expressions that should be spoken only under the blanket’),Footnote ¹² the second and the third to Watt’s pudendis (‘you use in public words which but lately were considered shameful in private’),Footnote ¹³ the first and the third to Delz’s receptis (‘you use in public words which are only admissible under the blanket’).Footnote ¹⁴

These unsuccessful attempts at emendation were all based on Housman’s assumption that modo sub lodice relictis | uteris in turba can only mean ‘you use in public things lately left beneath the blanket’. However, another, more promising, interpretation seems possible: ‘you use in public things that you have lately stopped employing beneath the blanket’, that is, ‘you use in public Greek terms of endearment that you have recently ceased to employ in the bedroom’.Footnote ¹⁵ The next two sentences (196–9 quod enim … conputat annos) would explain why the uetula has stopped using Greek locutions such as ζωὴ καὶ ψυχή under the covers: she is too old and no longer has sexual partners to talk to there. With relictis thus interpreted, the passage has nearly the sense that, according to Housman, is required by the context; one detail, however, is incongruous. If the uetula who is about to turn eighty-six has stopped using Greek endearments sub lodice because of old age, she should have done so not ‘lately’ (modo) but a long time ago. An ironic use of modo, which in other contexts cannot be ruled out,Footnote ¹⁶ in this passage would be as inappropriate as an ironic use of ‘recently’ in a sentence such as ‘you, a sixty-year-old lady, have recently finished high school and use teenage slang’. Of course, there could be an ironic aspect in saying that only ‘recently’ the uetula has achieved the understanding that titillating Grecisms are not appropriate sub lodice. But this explanation of modo sub lodice relictis would create more difficulties than it would solve: with the transmitted text so interpreted, the behaviour of the uetula would in fact be inconsistent (an old woman who has realized that Greek endearments are inappropriate under the blanket should a fortiori perceive that they are even less appropriate when used in public), and such inconsistency would not make satirical sense in Juvenal’s context; on the contrary, it would weaken the force of the vituperation, because Juvenal would be implicitly saying that the silly uetula has ‘recently’ come to her senses, albeit partially. Emendation is therefore necessary. Leo, who understood the passage as meaning ‘uetula Graece loquens amatoria inserit ut alliciat uiros, deserta scilicet’, proposed the substitution of mihi for modo.Footnote ¹⁷ The conjecture is palaeographically neat (mⁱ, the ancient nota for mihi, can easily turn into m^o, the ancient nota for modo),Footnote ¹⁸ but it is also far from felicitous: as a ‘datiuus ethicus’, mihi would be an otiose filler whether in the main clause (interuenit illud | ζωὴ καὶ ψυχή, mihi sub lodice …) or in the relative clause (interuenit illud | ζωὴ καὶ ψυχή mihi, sub lodice …); moreover, in both cases the ordo uerborum would be anomalous, because the ‘datiuus ethicus’ normally occurs in second position in its clause.Footnote ¹⁹ If taken with the main clause and construed with relictis as a dative of agent or of person benefited, mihi would be absurd. If it were a ‘datiuus termini’ governed by interuenit, it would be inept: interuenit … mihi would then have to mean mihi superuenit ex improuiso (‘whenever that naughty ζωὴ καὶ ψυχή unexpectedly reaches my ear, you are using in public words that you have ceased to employ in the bedroom’);Footnote ²⁰ but to emphasize that the uetula often uses lascivious Greek words when the poet is around would be irrelevant and even misleading in this context, since for the poet, evidently, the indecent behaviour of the old woman is objectionable in general, regardless of whether her lustful words reach his ear.Footnote ²¹ Note also that from a metrical point of view a syntactical break after mihi would be abnormal, since in the Latin hexameter a diaeresis after the third foot very rarely coincides with a pause in the sense.Footnote ²²

Other conjectures hardly deserve mention: the deletion of lines 195–6 quod enim … nequam by GuyetFootnote ²³ and the deletion of lines 195–8 modo … pinnae by KnocheFootnote ²⁴ clumsily amputate the text and destroy its intertextual connection with Mart. 6.23.Footnote ²⁵ Even less attractive is the violent alteration of the paradosis proposed by Heinrich (toties lasciuum interseris for the transmitted quotiens lasciuum interuenit at line 194; deletion of lines 193–4 Graece … uetula and of lines 195–6 modo … turba).Footnote ²⁶ The attempt at emendation by Francken (quotiens lasciuum interuenit illud | ζωὴ καὶ ψυχή, modo sub lodice relicta | u<er>teris in turba) is grotesquely contrary to the required sense.Footnote ²⁷

The best conjecture suggested so far is another proposal by Delz, peractis (‘“du gebrauchst in der Öffentlichkeit Ausdrücke, die du kürzlich noch unter der Decke beim concubitus verwendet hast”. Handlung und begleitende Äusserungen wären in peractis ebenso verkürzend zusammengefasst wie in concumbunt Graece’).Footnote ²⁸ Delz observes that, pace Housman, Juvenal’s passage is probably intended to deride not elderly women who no longer have a sexual life but uetulae who are (or seek to be) sexually active, such as those evoked at Juv. 1.37–41, who make gigolos rich.Footnote ²⁹ I think that Delz’s suggestion is on the right lines, but I am not convinced by peractis, which, with all due respect to Delz, cannot mean ‘Ausdrücke, die du … verwendet hast’, but rather (contra mentem poetae) ‘actions you have performed’. I suggest relatis (‘uttered’),Footnote ³⁰ which fits the context better (cf. 198 dicas haec mollius …) and is palaeographically closer to the transmitted reading (for the very easy corruption of relatis to relictis cf. Manil. 5.1 relatis LM : relictis G). I would also put a colon after uetula (194), because quotiens … turba (194–6), in my opinion, explains non est hic sermo pudicus | in uetula (193–4). In summary, I think that we should read and punctuate lines 193–6 as follows:

The sense of lines 193–9 thus restored is that Greek endearments are shameless and disgusting when they come from a uetula, because they reveal her repulsive appetite for sex; in fact, when she uses lascivious expressions such as ζωὴ καὶ ψυχή in public, one senses that she is lustful and has lately uttered them in the bedroom to arouse her partner, because (196 enim) alluring Greek words are a powerful tool of seduction;Footnote ³² however (197 tamen), she is too old and ugly, so, to her disappointment, they are ineffective both sub lodice and in turba, where she employs Greek sweet words when looking for new partners. Left unsaid is that, like other old women in Latin invective,Footnote ³³ she can only pay for sex.