Persius 5.129–31

This is the reading of Clausen's OCT, in which no variant for line 131 is recorded in the apparatus.No doubt the hendiadys ‘scutica et metus…erilis’ is not impossible,2 but it seems to me not to be a well chosen expression. Since the scutica belongs to the master, one is tempted to construe erilis with both nouns, not just with metus. But then the adjective must function in two different ways: ‘scutica… erilis’ is possessive, ‘his master's strap’, but ‘metus…erilis’ is objective, ‘fear of his master’. And ‘metus…erilis’ in this passage receives no support from ‘erilis…metus’ at Plautus, Amphitruo 1069, which means ‘fear for my mistress’.