In his reply to my response to his review of From Augustus To Nero, J. Solodow attempts to save face, writhing politely, but unfortunately leaving some issues which still need to be addressed. He grants openly that he was wrong about insecutus and that res plural = ‘state’ is possible, and he accepts tacitly my refutation of his claims of other supposed errors made by me; but two serious problems remain. He would appear to be under the misguided impression that the adverb eo can only mean ‘(to) there’; but see OLD s.v. eo 3 adverb for the requisite senses of ‘therefore’ and ‘to such a degree’. There is also still lamentable confusion about omittent and quantity. He maintains that because quantities are not marked in the book’s vocabulary omitto could be mistaken as a second conjugation; but, of course, regardless of quantity, omitto (rather than omitteo) cannot possibly be a verb of the second conjugation, as any properly taught student would know. I will also take this opportunity to correct another highly questionable claim of his — that the book would not induce users to continue with the subject. To that speculation I can oppose the hard fact that out of the three classes at McMaster who used the coursepack on which the book was directly based 75% continued with their study of Latin.
BMCR 2007.05.02