Abstract

The manuscript version of this line, apart from a nonsensical variant tutus for bubus, is et Tiberis nostris advena bubus erat. The trouble here has been that scholars have taken advena to mean ‘stranger’, ‘foreigner’, ‘alien’, or German ‘fremd’. Clearly the sentence and Tiber was a stranger to our oxen makes no sense in the context, and for this reason many scholars have either produced strange translations or else have dabbled in dubious emendation