53. SVRGAT AD HANC VOCEM PLENA PIVS IGNIS AB ARA. The same favourable omen at Met X 278-79 (Pygmalion has finished his prayer to Venus) 'amici numinis omen, / flamma ter accensa est apicemque per aera duxit'.
53. PLENA ... AB ARA. Another indication of Graecinus' devotion to the Caesars.
53. PIVS. 'Holy'; compare pia tura at Am III iii 33, Met XI 577, and Tr II 59, pia sacra at Tr V v 2, and pio ... igne at Tr V v 12.
54. LVCIDVS. Proleptic: 'The flame-tips would become bright and furnish a good omen for your prayer'.
55. NE CVNCTA QVERAMVR. 'So that not everything I say will be a complaint'.
57. LAETITAE EST LT. Most manuscripts have LAETITIA EST. Similarly at Met VIII 430 'illi laetitiae est cum munere muneris auctor' most codices read laetitia est. Heinsius thought LAETITIAE possibly correct here, as might be the case also in the Metamorphoses: laetitiae could easily have been misread as laetitia ē [=est], with laetitiae est as a later correction.
58. FRATER. L. Pomponius Flaccus (PIR1 P 538), consul ordinarius for 17. As the greater honour would indicate (Graecinus was consul suffectus), Flaccus was more prominent than his brother and, unlike Graecinus, is several times mentioned in literary sources outside Ovid. At II 129 Velleius Paterculus speaks of Flaccus' ability and modesty, and Suetonius (Tib 42 1) names him as a drinking-companion of the emperor, made propraetor of Syria by Tiberius. Tacitus says that Flaccus proposed the supplicationum dies following the discovery in 16 of Libo's plot against Tiberius (Ann II 32 3); at Ann II 41 2 he names Flaccus as consul at the time of Germanicus' great triumph in 17, and at VI 27 3 mentions Flaccus' death in 34 while propraetor of Syria. For Flaccus' special mission to Thrace shortly after the time this poem was written, see at 75 ([p 308]).
EP I x is addressed to Flaccus, but gives little information except that Flaccus had, like Graecinus, given help to Ovid (37-40). Ovid's relations with Flaccus were clearly not as intimate as those with his brother.
59-60. The distich may be an interpolation, or at least deeply corrupted in its present form. Professor E. Fantham points out to me that the construction of die with both summo ... Decembri and Iani is awkward, and that dies Iani does not seem to be used elsewhere in Latin literature. The tense of suspicit is strange as well: a future would normally be expected here.
61. QVAEQVE EST IN VOBIS PIETAS. 'Your family-feeling is so great that ...' The same idiom at Met V 373 'quae iam patientia nostra est', EP I vii 59, EP II ii 21-22 'quaeque tua est pietas in totum nomen Iuli, / te laedi cum quis laeditur inde [=ex illis] putas', and Hor Sat I ix 54-55 'quae tua uirtus, / expugnabis'. The sense is frequent in prose (OLD qui1 A 12).