AN ἀδέσποτον—AND A QUESTION

Echos du Monde Classiquelil lassical Views XXXII, n.s. 8, 1989, 353-354 AN ao£alro-rov-AND A QUESTION 353 In EMC xxxi i, n.s. 7, 1988, p. 95, appears a four -lin e English epigram by that prolific writer , Anon , under the title "To an Acqu aintan ce."! A Lat in version , also in four lines, follo ws the English.? My immediate reaction, on reading it, was to think of the following ep igram , entitled "In Zoilum ," by the humanist George Buchanan : Frustra ego te laudo, [rustr a me, Zoile, laedis: Nemo mihi credit, Zolle, nemo tibi .3 Shortly afterwards, I happened to meet my colleague Professor Ronald Sheph erd ; and aft er reciting Buchan an 's distich to him , I said that it see med to me to underly the Engli sh verses. He immediately trump ed me by reconstru ctin g at the lunch -tabl e the following Greek co uplet, which he rememb ered enco untering as an undergraduate at Cambrid ge: ZWI.AE, &vva 'n~ J.1E iuixccu», WXrT/v O E (J ' bralvcv. O UO E va yap TCd()n~, ZWI.AE, mUOEv'trw . Were Buchanan's line s tran slat ed from this- supposedl y anci ent -Greek epigram? After the que stion was raised , the next stage was to hunt throu gh the Anthol ogy; which I hastily did , with no result (not surprising ly, in view of Zoilus' date)." It should be mentioned at this point, thou gh the fact is by no mean s decisive , that in Buchanan 's Opera the epigram is head ed "In Zoilum" only, and not (lik e man y oth ers in the coll ection) "E Gra eco ." Ce rtainly Buchanan's latest biographer? impli citly take s it as an original piece, obse rving: Thou speake st alw ays ill of me, I always speak well of thee: But, spite of all our noise and pother, Th e world believes nor one, nor t'other. 2 Tu mihi, amice, soles dura ma1cdicere lingua: dicimus at bene nos semper, amice, tibi. sed licet effrenum faciamus uterque tumul tum, nee mihi adhuc ullus nee tibi credi t homo . 3 Epigrammatum Liber 1.12. 4 Unle ss. of cour se, he figure s in the poem merely as a "type" of the carping critic. 5 I.D. McF arlan e, Bu chanan (London 1981). See especially 309 -310, and 3 16 (with notes). Th e opinion of Gilles Menage, quoted on 309 , that the lines "In Zoilu m" went back to Libanius, is false, as can easi ly be verif ied from the Index Verborum in the Teubn er edi tion. 354 D.F.S. THOMSON "Some critics have felt that Buchanan, more than any other modem poet, has captured the spirit of the Greek epigram .. . a number of the epitaphs. . . and one or two others such as In Zoilum or Amorr': If the lines have indeed a Greek model, this has so far-after twenty-four hours of intermittent searching--cluded me, and I should be grateful to anyone who can supply the reference I have apparently missed. (If not, the probable explanation is that the Greek couplet is a modem creation, whether by my colleague's former Cambridge supervisor or by another person who, perceiving how "Greek" in spirit Buchanan's epigram was, set about composing a Greek version of Buchanan's original Latin.) I need hardly add that a mere Latinist would be most glad to receive enlightenment from a Grecian on this point of ultimate authorship. UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO D.F.S. THOMSON 6 Ibid. , 316 . A public lec ture on Buchanan, in the cour se of whi ch "In Zoi lurn" was quoted, once elicited the same opinion, quit e independently, from the late Gilbert Norwood. ...