Deianira complains that Hercules, as a slave of Omphale, did not refrain from telling to the Lydian queen his famous labours; among them, the Hydra:

quaeque redundabat fecundo vulnere serpens

fertilis et damnis dives ab ipsa suis (Ov. Her. 9.95f.)

‘It will be admitted that redundabat, which usually means to “overflow”’ can only be applied to the Hydra by a very strong metaphor; but it is not only a strong one, it is quite unexampled: so A. Palmer in The Academy 49 (1896), 160. But his own emendation rebellabat has not convinced anybody – rightly, as I think. Still, his remark was not otiose: redundabat refers to the ‘growing again’ of Hydra's heads, that seem to ‘spring’ from the wounds like water's spurts; it is not impossible, but nevertheless it is strange. Why does Ovid use this metaphor ‘a fluctibus desumpta’ (Burman) here? I suggest that there is a precise reason: Ovid does not mention the name of the serpens, but of course his reader knows it and also knows why the Hydra is so called: πò τν ὐδτων.

M. J. Dewar argues that in Georg. 1.511–4 Virgil may have been drawing a disquieting parallel between Orestes, evoked through an imitation of Aeschylus (‘Choeph.’ 1021–5), and Octavian, present a few lines above (498ff.).

Pausanias probably supports this suggestion; he shows that the link Octavian-Orestes existed quite early and in a sense favourable to Octavian, even though it may soon have been used in a negative sense by anti-Caesarian propaganda on account of the dark side of the myth. In front of the temple of Hera in Argos there was still visible in the second century a statue representing Orestes, but identified by the inscription as Augustus. Certainly this parallel Augustus-Orestes was not proposed-and preserved - with polemical purpose in a famous sanctuary and in the Augustan age. Given the resemblance between history and myth and the moral weight of the famous myth itself, it is unlikely that we have to do with the mere re-use of any old statue.

In De alimentorum facultatibus, Book I, Ch. 1, Galen begins his discussion of the powers of foodstuffs by a rough sketch of the opinions of earlier physicians on this subject. He says that according to some of them these powers are only known (γνσθαι) on the basis of experience (πεῖρα), according to others on the basis of a combination of experience and reasoning (λογισμς), whereas a third group gave priority of importance to reasoning (202.4–6 Helmreich). Galen proceeds to say that there is considerable disagreement between these physicians on the topic in question and that, consequently, an unbiased testing of their opinions is necessary; this testing should operate by means of argumentation (πδειξις). Now there are two different starting-points for argumentation, i.e. perception and ‘distinct thinking’ (ἢ γρ ξ αἰσθσεως ἢ κ νοσεως ναργος). Then the text printed by Helmreich runs as follows: κα μς ναγκαῖν στιν ἢ θατρῳ τοτων ἢ μφοτροις χρσασθαι πρς τν το προκειμνου σκμματος εὕρεσιν: ‘It is necessary for us, too, to use either one of these (i.e. either perception or thinking) or both of them in order to find the question under discussion.’