go to bed. In the morning, Scylla tries to talk Nisus into making peace with Minos, and the nurse brews a magical potion, but nothing works and Scylla cuts off the lock. The city falls and Scylla, lamenting Minos' refusal to marry her, is taken prisoner on the Cretan ships which sail around Attica. The poet describes her metamorphosis in detail; by the pitying Amphitrite she is transformed into the ciris bird, supposedly from the Greek keirein ("cut"). Jupiter transforms Nisus into a sea-eagle, which pursues the ciris like Scorpio pursues Orion. Based on composition, the poem must be placed after Ovid and before the 2nd century. A Tiberian date seems likely for its composition. Copa ("The Barmaid") This poem in 38 elegiac couplets describes the song of the barmaid Syrisca. She describes a lush, pastoral setting and a picnic laid out in the grass and invites an unnamed man to spend time with her, stop thinking about the future, and live for the present. Moretum ("The Pesto") The Moretum in 124 hexameter lines describes the preparation by the poor farmer Simylus of a meal. The poem is in the tradition of Hellenistic poetry about the poor and their diet and has a precedent in Callimachus' Hecale and poems that describe theoxeny. Waking before dawn, he starts the fire, grinds grain as he sings and talks to his African slave Scybale, and starts baking. His garden and its products are described. Simylus fashions from garlic, cheese, and herbs the moretum, a type of pesto, eats, and goes out to plow. The poem is notable for its use of the phrase "e pluribus unus". Dirae ("Curses") This poem in 103 hexameter lines is a series of curses by a dispossessed farmer on the veteran who has usurped his land. The tradition of curse poetry goes back to the works of Archilochus and Hipponax. The poem may have connections to the Hellenistic Arae of Euphorion of Chalcis, but it is also very much in the pastoral tradition of Theocritus and the Eclogues. The poem opens pastorally by addressing Battarus, a friend whose farm has also been confiscated and describing the actions of the soldier called Lycurgus. First the speaker curses the plants on the farm with bareness and then asks the forests to burn before Lycurgus destroys them with his axe. He then prays to Neptune for a flood to destroy the