In Plautus’ Mercator, the senex amator Demipho lusts after the slave girl Pasicompsa, who is the lover of his son Charinus. Demipho knows nothing about their relationship. He believes that Charinus bought Pasicompsa as a present for his mother while he was trading on Rhodes. In an attempt to gain access to her, Demipho enlists the aid of his elderly neighbour, Lysimachus, who taunts him for his infatuation with such a young woman. Eager to persuade Lysimachus that he is truly in love, Demipho offers to let him cut off his head, finger, ear, nose or lip, or even kill him with love if he is lying about his feelings (308–10):

decide collum stanti si falsum loquor;
uel, ut scias me amare, cape cultrum, [ac] seca
digitum uel aurem uel tu nasum uel labrum:
si mouero me seu secari sensero,
Lysimache, auctor sum ut me amando enices.

Lines 3.20–2 of the text published by Justin Stover as Apuleius’ De Platone 3 are printed by him as follows:

In Book 6 of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Lucius contemplates his possible death at the hands of the robbers. After one robber threatens to throw him off a cliff, he remarks to himself how easily such an act would kill him (Met. 6.26):

Lucius seems to contradict the description of his metamorphosis at 3.24: pili mei crassantur in setas, et cutis tenella duratur in corium, ‘my hair thickens into bristles and my thin skin hardens into hide’. Met. 6.26 suggests that Lucius’ metamorphosis may not be as complete as it initially seemed: his skin is not the thick hide of an ass but the delicate membrane of a leech. This passage is further complicated by a textual dispute: where all modern editions and most translations read hirudinis, ‘leech’, our earliest and best manuscripts have hirundinis, ‘swallow’. I propose that we should restore ‘swallow’ on the testimony of these manuscripts and because it better reflects Lucius’ initial desire for an avian rather than an asinine transformation. My examination of this passage will also highlight the liminal nature of Lucius’ metamorphosis. Despite his apparent physical transformation, he remains caught between the human and the animal worlds in both mind and body.

The kleptocratic supremacy of the praetorian prefect C. Fulvius Plautianus (PIR2 F 554) was felt throughout the city of Rome, the Empire and (according to one author) even beyond the imperial frontiers. Indeed, for the senatorial historian Dio Cassius, there was no more picturesque demonstration of Plautianus' acquisitiveness than his seizure of strange striped horse-like creatures from ‘islands in the Erythraean Sea’. The passage, as preserved in the text of Xiphilinus' Epitome, reads as follows (Dio Cass. 76[75].14.3):