Charles Simmons, The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books XIII and XIV

suo iam Quiriti. For the collective force of the singular, cf. 354 n., xiii.253 n. The reference of iam has been doubted. It has been taken with Quiriti, Romulus being described as ruling over (see previous note) what was ‘now (by the accession of the Sabines) his Quirite people’ of Romans and Sabines. Cf. Liv. I. xiii. 5, Fast.IV. 855(of the Romans alone) tum iuvenem (sc. Remum) nondum facti flevere Quirites. It is unsafe on metrical grounds to take iam otherwise than with regia, when the same sense is got as by those who connect it with suo. Quiriti need not then be narrowed in reference to the Sabines only, as by Burmann, but may still be taken of the joint people, of which Romulus was now by the death of Tatius full king, as he had been formerly of the Romans alone. Polle has a quite different explanation, to which Zingerle refers apparently with approval. He connects iam with reddentem iura, to which he gives the sense of ‘surrendering his royal power,’ with reference to the story that Romulus proposed to abdicate and establish a commonwealth: “ἐδίδαξε καὶ τοὺς ἐν Ῥώμη δυνατοὺς ἀβασίλευτον ζητεῖν καὶ αὐτόνομον πολιτείαν” (Plut. Rom. 27).