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[ Dyed in vermilion.—Ver. 11. 'Minium,' 'red lead,' or 'vermilion,' was discovered by Callias, an Athenian, according to Theophrastus. It was sometimes mixed with the wax used for tablets: probably not the best, but that which was naturally of a bad colour. This censure of the tablets is a good illustration of the grapes being sour. In the last Elegy, before he has received his repulse, he declares the wax to be 'splen-dida,' 'of brilliaut whiteness through bleaching;' now, on the other hand, he finds, most ominously, that it is as red as blood.]
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[ Dreadful crosses.—Ver. 18. See the First Book of the Pontic Epistlea, Ep. vi. 1. 38, and the Note to the passage.]
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[ The screech-owl.—Ver. 20. 'Strix' here means a screech-owl; and not the fabulous bird referred to under that name, in the Sixth Book of the Fasti, and the thirteenth line of the Eighth Elegy of this Book.]