ABSTRACT
Serious problems were caused by the last clause (clipeoque micantia fulmina mittit and its variants) already in antiquity. Modern editors and commentators, however, (Mynors, Williams, Geymonat, Perret, Paratore and most recently Dingel, Goold and Rivero et al.) seem to have reached consensus, but is it to be trusted? The above text is also found in Hirtzel, Janell, Goelzer, Fairclough, Sabbadini, Sabbadini-Castiglioni. We must look back to Heyne-Wagner to find a dissenting voice; they preferred mittunt. But the intransitive or absolute use of mittere elsewhere gives no support.2
