The name of the tribe was difficult metrically, so here Ovid calls them _Iazyges_, while at _Tr_ III xii 30 (cited in the previous note) he calls them _Sauromatae_. At _EP_ I ii 77 he solves the difficulty through hendiadys: 'quid _Sauromatae_ faciant, quid _Iazyges_ acres'.
=11. ASPICIS.= Ovid here uses verbs of seeing in an interesting way. At 7 and 9 he has _uides_; then _aspicis_ suggests continuity but at the same time movement toward a new subject, and with a military detail introduced so as to introduce Vestalis' experience of war; then in 13-14 the emphasis is changed by the contrary-to-fact past optative _utinam ... spectata fuisset_.
=11. ASPICIS ET MITTI SVB ADVNCO TOXICA FERRO.= 'You behold how poison is hurled on the barbed steel' (Wheeler). The _telum_ of 12 should be taken to be a spear, since _mittere_ never seems to be used of arrows. At _Ibis_ 135 the _hasta_ is mentioned as the special weapon of the Iazyges.
=11. ADVNCO.= The spear had hooks. Compare _Met_ VI 252-53 'quod [_sc_ ferrum] simul eductum est, pars et pulmonis _in hamis_ / eruta cumque anima cruor est effusus in auras', where Bömer cites among other passages Curtius IX 5 23 'corpore ... nudato animaduertunt _hamos inesse telo_ nec aliter id sine pernicie corporis extrahi posse quam ut secando uulnus augerent' and Prop II xii 9 'et merito _hamatis_ manus est armata sagittis'.
=13-14. ATQVE VTINAM PARS HAEC TANTUM SPECTATA FVISSET, / NON ETIAM PROPRIO COGNITA MARTE TIBI.= A similar opposition at _Met_ III 247-48 (of Actaeon) _'uelletque uidere, / non etiam sentire_ canum fera facta suorum'.
=15. TENDITVR= _Owen_ TENDITIS _codd_. The number of _tenditis_ is inappropriate to the context. Owen's _tenditur_, independently conjectured two years later by Ehwald (_KB_ 84), seems a somewhat more elegant solution to the problem than Merkel's TENDISTI. It puts the weight of the line on _ad primum ... pilum_ rather than on Vestalis himself; the pentameter, with its emphasis on the _honor_, suggests that this is right.
=15. PRIMVM PILVM.= Compare _Am_ III viii 27-28 'proque bono uersu _primum_ deducite _pilum_! / nox [_A. Y. Campbell_: hoc _uel_ hic _codd_] tibi, si belles [_Madvig_: uelles _codd_], possit, Homere, dari'. The _primipilaris_ was the commander of the first century of the first cohort of the Roman legion, and hence first in rank among the legion's centurions.