ABSTRACT
It is hardly an overstatement to say that line 65 in the Ars poetica has occupied the author's whole professional life. In the meantime, Charles Brink had shaken, if not undermined, our confidence in the transmitted text: thrice he had used the obeloi to mark spurious words or word combinations: in connection with pronos, regis and diu palus. The author believed at the time to have found this reason on the basis of the context in which the transmitted pyrrhicic palus was embedded. Horace was dealing with the possibility of enriching and renewing the poetic vocabulary: everyday words could become new through new combinations and the poet was free to create new designations if necessary. The analysis has to go deeper into the two first examples of transitoriness (to explain debemur morti nos nostraque) and the way Horace has phrased this fundamental law of existence.
