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62-527: The text is written in a very high level Greek language, displaying a real refinement of Greek culture so far east in Kandahar. The verses are in the sophisticated acrostich form. Sophytos and Naratos are not Greek names. They may have been Indian, their actual names being possibly Subhūti and Nārada . The name "Sophytos" is also known from a 4th-3rd century Greek coins of the Arachosian satrap Sophytos , who

124-635: A Hellenized Indian in the service of the Arachosians region of the Maurya Empire . The usage of Greek and Aramaic is attested in the area from the 3rd century BCE due to the Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription of Emperor Ashoka . The inscription highlight the facts that some Indians lived in the "Greek" city of Alexandria Arachosia , and had reached a very high level of Greek culture (only one mistake in prosody has been identified in

186-459: A complex kind of acrostic. In the manuscript, some letters are capitalized and written extra-large, non-italic, and in red, and the lines are shifted left or right and internally spaced out as necessary to position the red letters within three crosses that extend through all the lines of the poem. The letters within each cross spell out a verse from the New Testament : The " INRI " at the top of

248-401: A form of steganography , where the author seeks to conceal the message rather than proclaim it. This might be achieved by making the key letters uniform in appearance with the surrounding text, or by aligning the words in such a way that the relationship between the key letters is less obvious. These are referred to as null ciphers in steganography, using the first letter of each word to form

310-499: A gamma acrostic with the word discernunt ' they discern ' in line 18) and OTIA ' leisure ' in Satires 1.2.7–10, which appears just after Horace has been advised to take a rest from writing satire. The acrostic OTIA also occurs in Ovid , Metamorphoses 15.478–81, a passage describing the return of the peace-loving king Numa Pompilius to Rome. Odes 4.2, which starts with

372-526: A hidden message in an otherwise innocuous text. Using letters to hide a message, as in acrostic ciphers, was popular during the Renaissance , and could employ various methods of enciphering, such as selecting other letters than initials based on a repeating pattern ( equidistant letter sequences ), or even concealing the message by starting at the end of the text and working backwards. A well-known acrostic in Greek

434-467: A local tradition of rune poems emerged. These poems list the runes in order, followed by verse that describes the word traditionally associated with the listed rune. The first verse of the Old Icelandic rune poem, for the rune Fé , is as follows: Fé er frænda róg ok flæðar viti ok grafseiðs gata. English translation: Wealth = source of discord among kinsmen and fire of the sea and path of

496-466: A passage which mentions the goddess Dione (another name for Venus ). In Eclogue 8 , alongside a passage dedicating the poem to an unnamed person and asking him to accept it, Neil Adkin reads the words TV SI ES ACI (i.e. accipe ) ( ' if you are the one, accept! ' ). In Aeneid 7.601–4, a passage which mentions Mars and war, describing the custom of opening the gates of the Temple of Janus ,

558-528: A result, in Psalm 37, for the letters dalet and kaph , there is only one verse, and the letter ayin is not represented. Psalm 111 and 112 have 22 lines, but 10 verses. Psalm 145 does not represent the letter nun , having 21 verses, but one Qumran manuscript of this psalm does have that missing line, which agrees with the Septuagint . Written around 393, St. Augustine 's well-known abecedarian psalm against

620-600: A word it is called a telestich ; the combination of an acrostic and a telestich in the same composition is called a double acrostic (e.g. the first-century Latin Sator Square ). Acrostics are common in medieval literature, where they usually serve to highlight the name of the poet or his patron, or to make a prayer to a saint. They are most frequent in verse works but can also appear in prose. The Middle High German poet Rudolf von Ems for example opens all his great works with an acrostic of his name, and his world chronicle marks

682-418: Is a collection of rhyming quatrains about different animals , ordered, albeit loosely, in an alphabet sequence. Iroha mojigusari is a Japanese poetic form , a "specialized version" of the abecedarius, in which the first line begins with the first and ends with the second character of the alphabet, the second one begins with the third and ends with the fourth character of the alphabet, and so on, "until all

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744-500: Is a horses ass. In October 2009, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger sent a note to assemblyman Tom Ammiano in which the first letters of lines 3-9 spell "Fuck You"; Schwarzenegger claimed that the acrostic message was coincidental, which mathematicians Stephen Devlin and Philip Stark disputed as statistically implausible. In January 2010, Jonathan I. Schwartz , the CEO of Sun Microsystems , sent an email to Sun employees on

806-493: Is a special type of acrostic in which the first letter of every word, strophe or verse follows the order of the letters in the alphabet. "Abecedarius" (or "abecedarium") is a Medieval Latin word meaning "ABC primer", derived by adding the suffix "-arius" (-a, -um) to the names of the first four letters of the alphabet (a+b+c+d). According to the OED , the earliest use of its English cognate, "abecedary", dates back at least to

868-474: Is for the phrase JESUS CHRIST, GOD’S SON, SAVIOUR , the initial letters of which spell ΙΧΘΥΣ ( ICHTHYS ), which means fish : According to Cicero , acrostics were a regular feature of Sibylline prophecies (which were written in Greek hexameters . The type of acrostic is that known as a “gamma acrostic” (from the shape of the Greek letter Γ ), where the same words are found both horizontally and vertically. Cicero refers to an acrostic in this passage using

930-855: Is in the published version and is included in a cross-stitch sampler of the poem from 1793. ) Behold, O God! In rivers of my tears I come to thee! bow down thy blessed ears To hear my Plaint; and let thine eyes which keep Continual watch behold a Sinner weep: Let not, O God my God my Sins, tho' great, And numberless, between thy Mercy's-Seat And my poor Soul have place; since we are taught, [Thou] Lord, remember'st thyne, if Thou art sought. I come not, Lord, with any other merit Than what I by my Saviour Christ inherit: Be then his wounds my balm— his stripes my Bliss; His thorns my crown; my death be blest in his. And thou, my blest Redeemer, Saviour, God, Quit my accounts, withhold thy vengeful rod! O beg for me, my hopes on Thee are set; And Christ forgive me, since thou'st paid my debt The living font,

992-451: Is only one verse, and the letter Ayin is not represented. Psalm 111 and 112 have 22 lines, but 10 verses. Psalm 145 does not represent the letter Nun , having 21 one verses, but one Qumran manuscript of this Psalm does have that missing line, which agrees with the Septuagint . Some, like O Palmer Robertson, see the acrostic Psalms of book 1 and book 5 of Psalms as teaching and memory devices as well as transitions between subjects in

1054-528: Is otherwise unknown. There is a possibility that the Sophytos of the inscription may have been a descendant of the eponymous Satrap Sophytos . According to the inscription, Sophytos was ruined in early life, but later rebuilt his fortune through fortitude. Some authors consider that his ruin may be due to the invasion of Arachosia by the Greco-Bactrians in the 2nd century BCE, supposing that Sophytos had been

1116-489: Is unequal, five of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet are not represented and the sequence of two letters is reversed. In Psalm 25 , one Hebrew letter is not represented; the following letter ( resh ) repeated. In Psalm 34 , the current final verse, 23, does fit verse 22 in content, but makes the line too long. In Psalms 37 and 111 , the numbering of verses and the division into lines are interfering with each other; as

1178-607: The Right Ginza , a Mandaic text , are acrostic hymns, with each stanza ordered according to a letter of the Mandaic alphabet . There is an acrostic secreted in the Dutch national anthem Wilhelmus ( William ): the first letters of its fifteen stanzas spell WILLEM VAN NASSOV. This was one of the hereditary titles of William of Orange ( William the Silent ), who introduces himself in the poem to

1240-660: The Book of Lamentations , in the praise of the good wife in Proverbs 31 :10-31 , and in Psalms 9-10, 25 , 34 , 37 , 111 , 112 , 119 and 145 of the Hebrew Bible . Notable among the acrostic Psalms is the long Psalm 119 , which typically is printed in subsections named after the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet , each section consisting of 8 verses, each of which begins with the same letter of

1302-519: The Donatists is the earliest known example of medieval rhythmical verse. Another example is the Old Polish poem Skarga umierającego ("Lament of Dying Man"). Such poems are important historical sources on the development of a language's orthography ; Constantine of Preslav 's abecedarius from the 9th century, for example, documents the early Slavic alphabet. In languages that used a runic alphabet ,

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1364-471: The Hebrew alphabet , each section consisting of 8 verses, each of which begins with the same letter of the alphabet and the entire psalm consisting of 22 x 8 = 176 verses; and Psalm 145 , which is recited three times a day in the Jewish services . Some acrostic psalms are technically imperfect. For example Psalm 9 and Psalm 10 appear to constitute a single acrostic psalm, but the length assigned to each letter

1426-560: The Unite the Right rally incident in Charlottesville, Virginia. The members' letter of resignation contained the acrostic "RESIST" formed from the first letter of each paragraph. On 23 August 2017, University of California, Berkeley energy professor Daniel Kammen resigned from his position as a State Department science envoy with a resignation letter in which the word "IMPEACH" was spelled out by

1488-611: The nightingale S weetly as ever tunes her Daulian strain. A nd over Tenedos the flagship burns. H ow shall men loiter when the great moon shines O paque upon the sail, and Argive seas R ear like blue dolphins their cerulean curves? S amos is fallen, Lesbos streams with fire, E tna in rage, Canopus cold in hate, S ummon the Orphic bard to stranger dreams. A nd so for us who raise Athene 's torch. S ufficient to her message in this hour: S ons of Columbia , awake, arise! Acrostic : Nicholas Murray Butler

1550-421: The sigma Σ has been replaced by the lunate sigma C. Stele of Sophytos The left vertical line, formed by repeating the first letter of each sentence ( acrostich ) reads ΔΙΑ ΣΩΦΥΤΟΥ ΤΟΥΝΑΡΑΤΟΥ "By Sophitos, son of Naratos" Acrostich An acrostic is a poem or other word composition in which the first letter (or syllable, or word) of each new line (or paragraph , or other recurring feature in

1612-618: The 2nd century AD a verse-summary of the plot was added to each of the plays of Plautus . Each of these has an acrostic of the name of the play, for example: The 3rd century AD poet Commodian wrote a series of 80 short poems on Christian themes called Instructiones . Each of these is fully acrostic (with the exception of poem 60, where the initial letters are in alphabetical order), starting with PRAEFATIO ‘preface’ and INDIGNATIO DEI ‘the wrath of God’. The initials of poem 80, read backwards, give COMMODIANUS MENDICUS CHRISTI ‘Commodian, Christ’s beggar’. Chapters 2–5 of Book 12 in

1674-606: The Dutch people. This title also returned in the 2010 speech from the throne , during the Dutch State Opening of Parliament , whose first 15 lines also formed WILLEM VAN NASSOV. Vladimir Nabokov 's short story " The Vane Sisters " is known for its acrostic final paragraph, which contains a message from beyond the grave. In 1829, Edgar Allan Poe wrote an acrostic and simply titled it An Acrostic , possibly dedicated to her cousin Elizabeth Rebecca Herring (though

1736-470: The Greek word ἀκροστιχίς . The 3rd-century BC didactic poet Aratus , who was much admired and imitated by Cicero, Virgil and other Latin writers, appears to have been fond of using acrostics. One example is the famous passage in Phaenomena 783–7 where the word λεπτή ' slender, subtle ' occurs as a gamma acrostic and also twice in the text, as well as diagonally in the text and even cryptically taking

1798-590: The Life, the Way, I know, And but to thee, O whither shall I go? All other helps are vain: grant thine to me, For in thy cross my saving health I see. O hearken then, that I with faith implore, Lest Sin and Death sink me to rise no more. Lastly, O God, my course direct and guide, In Death defend me, that I never slide; And at Doomsday let me be rais'd again, To live with thee sweet Jesus say, Amen. Abecedarius An abecedarius (also abecedary and abecedarian )

1860-442: The abecedarian as an organizing principle, as do Jessica Greenbaum 's “A Poem for S.”, Thomas M. Disch ’s “Abecedary”, and Matthea Harvey ’s sequence “The Future of Terror/The Terror of Future”. Some of the best-known and loved abecedarians have been written for children, such as Dr. Seuss 's ABC or the roughly half-dozen alphabet books of Edward Gorey , the most notorious among them The Gashlycrumb Tinies . However, even

1922-485: The acrostics are the same as far as they go, the published text is missing the last four lines, truncating the acrostics to "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kin", "O God, my God, why hast thou forsak", and "If thou art the Christ, save thyself". The manuscript text is printed below, first as normal poetry, then spaced and bolded to bring out the acrostics. The word "Thou" in line 8 is not visible in this photograph, but

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1984-411: The alphabet and the entire psalm consisting of 22 x 8 = 176 verses; and Psalm 145 , which is recited three times a day in the Jewish services . Some acrostic psalms are technically imperfect. For example, Psalm 9 and Psalm 10 appear to constitute a single acrostic psalm together, but the length assigned to each letter is unequal and five of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet are not represented and

2046-512: The arbitrary structure triggers verbal extravagances". Hirsch names Harryette Mullen 's Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002), Carolyn Forché 's poem "On Earth" (2003), Barbara Hamby 's The Alphabet of Desire (2006) and Karl Elder 's Gilgamesh at the Bellagio (2007) as few modern examples structured in accordance with different variations of the basic abecedarian sequence, where the adherence to

2108-458: The beginning of each age with an acrostic of the key figure (Moses, David, etc.). In chronicles, acrostics are common in German and English but rare in other languages. Relatively simple acrostics may merely spell out the letters of the alphabet in order; such an acrostic may be called an 'alphabetical acrostic' or abecedarius . These acrostics occur in the first four of the five chapters that make up

2170-461: The completion of the acquisition of Sun by Oracle Corporation . The initial letters of the first seven paragraphs spelled "Beat IBM ". James May , former presenter on the BBC program Top Gear , was fired from the publication Autocar for spelling out a message using the large red initial at the beginning of each review in the publication's Road Test Yearbook Issue for 1992. Properly punctuated,

2232-449: The confirmed acrostics in the Hebrew Bible are alphabetic. These occur in four of the five chapters that make up the Book of Lamentations , in the praise of the good wife in Proverbs 31 :10-31, and in Psalms 25 , 34 , 37 , 111 , 112 , 119 , and 145 . Notable among the acrostic psalms is the long Psalm 119 , which typically is printed in subsections named after the 22 letters of

2294-443: The first letters of each paragraph. In the video game Zork the first letters of sentences in a prayer spelled " Odysseus " which was a possible solution to a Cyclops encounter in another room. On 4 May 2024, Noelia Voigt resigned as Miss USA 2023 with a resignation letter containing an acrostic spelling out "I am silenced". A double acrostic , may have words at the beginning and end of its lines, as in this example, on

2356-522: The form produces unusual and interesting aesthetic results. In the case of Forché 's "forty-seven page poem", for example, the rigorous alphabetical order "guides not only the stanzas, but also the words themselves": languid at the edge of the sea lays itself open to immensity leaf-cutter ants bearing yellow trumpet flowers      along the road left everything left all usual worlds behind library, lilac, linens, litany. Mary Jo Bang 's verse collection The Bride of E uses

2418-457: The golden day R emember now no more the fading gold, A straea fled, Proserpina in hell ; Y ou searchers of the earth be reconciled! B ecause, through all the blight of human woe, U nder Robigo 's rust, and Clotho 's shears, T he mind of man still keeps its argosies, L acedaemonian Helen wakes her tower, E cho replies, and lamentation loud R everberates from Thrace to Delos Isle; I tylus grieves, for whom

2480-494: The historical event in 29 lines, each of the first 26 not only beginning with the consecutive letters of the alphabet, but also composed only of words beginning with the respective letter: An Austrian army, awfully arrayed, Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade. Cossack commanders cannonading come, Dealing destruction's devastating doom. Every endeavor engineers essay, For fame, for fortune fighting - furious fray! Even though rarely used, some authors have preferred to use

2542-573: The initial letters of certain words in lines 2 and 1: Several acrostics have recently been discovered in Roman poets, especially in Virgil . Among others, in Eclogue 9 the acrostic VNDIS ' in the waves ' (lines 34–38) immediately precedes the words quis est nam ludus in undis? ' for what is your game in the waves?' ' , and DEA DIO (i.e. dea Dione ' the goddess Dione ' ) (lines 46–51) in

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2604-399: The initials L.E.L. refer to Letitia Elizabeth Landon ): E lizabeth it is in vain you say " L ove not" — thou sayest it in so sweet a way: I n vain those words from thee or L.E.L. Z antippe's talents had enforced so well: A h! if that language from thy heart arise, B reath it less gently forth — and veil thine eyes. E ndymion, recollect, when Luna tried T o cure his love —

2666-412: The letters of the alphabet have been used in order". The normal Iroha , however, is a pangram . Invented by Paul West , a British-born American novelist, poet, and essayist, the alphabet poem is a stricter modern variation of the abecedarius. It consists of 13 lines, each consisting of two words, each word starting with a letter which follows the initial letter of the preceding word. West introduced

2728-509: The message reads: "So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it's a real pain in the arse." In the 2012 third novel of his Caged Flower series, author Cullman Wallace used acrostics as a plot device. The parents of a protagonist send e-mails where the first letters of the lines reveal their situation in a concealed message. On 19 August 2017, the members of president Donald Trump 's Committee on Arts and Humanities resigned in protest over his response to

2790-409: The mid-15th century, preceding the first usage of "abecedarian" which, as an adjective meaning "arranged in alphabetical order", can be first attested in 1665. The related adjective "alphabetic" (from Ancient Greek ) has been used interchangeably with "abecedarian" since at least the 17th century. The abecedarius is most probably the oldest type of acrostic . Its origins have been linked to either

2852-479: The middle cross stands for Iēsus Nazarēnus , Rēx Iūdaeōrum , Latin for "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" ( John 19:19 ). The three quotes represent the three figures crucified on Golgotha, as recorded in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. (The text of the manuscript shown differs significantly from the text usually published, including in the reference. Many of the lines have somewhat different wording; and while

2914-483: The most experimental authors of the twentieth century have authored children's or quasi-children abecedarians. Written in an attempt to compose "a birthday book [she] would have liked as a child", To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays , Gertrude Stein 's intended follow-up to her first children's book, The World Is Round , has been described as "a romp through the alphabet" and an "unusual alphabet book". Also, Djuna Barnes ' last book, Creatures in an Alphabet

2976-409: The name MARS (the god of war) appears in acrostic form as well as in the text as follows: In Georgics 1 429–433, next to a passage which contains the words namque is certissimus auctor ' for he is the most certain author ' , the double-letter reverse acrostic MA VE PV (i.e. Publius Vergilius Maro) is found on alternate lines. In Eclogue 6 , 13–24 Virgil uses a double acrostic, with

3038-463: The name of Stroud , by Paul Hansford: The first letters make up the acrostic and the last letters the telestich; in this case they are identical. Another example of a double acrostic is the first-century Latin Sator Square . As well as being a double acrostic, the square contains several palindromes , and it can be read as a 25-letter palindromic sentence (of an obscure meaning). The poem Behold, O God! , by William Browne, can be considered

3100-422: The sacred nature of letters and the mystical significance of these types of arrangements or its didactic use as a mnemonic and instructive device for children. Indeed, this second type of abecedarii, mostly in the form of rhythmic arrangements or songs , is still popular and widely used tool to teach children the alphabet or other concepts. The oldest abecedarii found are of Semitic origin. In fact, all of

3162-512: The same word LAESIS ' for those who have been harmed ' going both upwards and downwards starting from the same letter L in line 19. Another double acrostic is found in Aeneid 2 , where the word PITHI (i.e. πείθει , Greek for he ‘persuades’ or ‘he deceives’) is found first backwards at 103–107, then forwards at 142–146, at the beginning and end of a speech by Sinon persuading the Trojans to bring

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3224-424: The sequence of two letters is reversed. In Psalm 25 one Hebrew letter is not represented, the following letter ( Resh ) repeated. In Psalm 34 the current final verse, 23, does fit verse 22 in content, but adds an additional line to the poem. In Psalms 37 and 111 the numbering of verses and the division into lines are interfering with each other; as a result in Psalm 37, for the letters Daleth and Kaph there

3286-506: The serpent. The Bríatharogam , a poetic form similar to the rune poem, was also adopted in Ireland for use with the ogham script . A famous example of abecedarius in English literature is Geoffrey Chaucer 's ABC . One of the most famous and complex modern examples of alliterative verse in the English language is Alaric Watts 's abecedarius The Siege of Belgrade which loosely chronicles

3348-534: The structure of the Psalms. Often the ease of detectability of an acrostic can depend on the intention of its creator. In some cases an author may desire an acrostic to have a better chance of being perceived by an observant reader, such as the acrostic contained in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (where the key capital letters are decorated with ornate embellishments). However, acrostics may also be used as

3410-579: The syllables DE CA TE (i.e. Greek δεκάτη ' tenth ' ) in Eclogue 4 , 9–11, with the same DEC A TE repeated cryptically both forwards and backwards in line 11. In another pseudo-Sibylline prophecy in poem 5 of Tibullus book 2 the words AVDI ME ‘hear me!’ are picked out in the first letters of alternate lines at the beginning of the prophecy. Virgil’s friend Horace also made occasional use of acrostics, but apparently much less than Virgil. Examples are DISCE ‘learn!’ ( Odes 1.18.11–15) (forming

3472-563: The term "abecedarius" for poems which follow Watts' arrangement, considering the "alphabet-in-acrostic" form just a loose application, as can be witnessed in these self-referential lines: An abecedarius always alliterates Blindly blunders, but blooms: Comes crawling craftily, cantering crazily, Daring, doubtless, dark dooms. In the words of the American poet and critic Edward Hirsch, "[t]he abecedarian has been revived in contemporary poetry with experimental force", because, "[p]aradoxically,

3534-487: The text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet. The term comes from the French acrostiche from post-classical Latin acrostichis , from Koine Greek ἀκροστιχίς , from Ancient Greek ἄκρος "highest, topmost" and στίχος "verse". As a form of constrained writing , an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aid memory retrieval. When the last letter of each new line (or other recurring feature) forms

3596-944: The whole text). Δ Δηρὸν ἐμῶγ κοκυῶν ἐριθηλέα δώματ᾽ ἐόντα Ι ἲς ἄμαχος Μοιρῶν ἐξόλεσεν τριάδος· Α αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ, τυννὸς κομιδῆι βιότοιό τε πατρῶν Σ Σώφυτος εὖνις ἐὼν οἰκτρὰ Ναρατιάδης, Ω ὡς ἀρετὴν Ἑκάτου Μουσέων τ᾽ ἤσχηκα σὺν ἐσθλῆι Φ φυρτὴν σωφροσύνηι, θήμος ἐπεφρασάμην Υ ὑψώσαιμί κε πῶς μέγαρον πατρώϊον αὔθις· Τ τεκνοφόρον δὲ λαβὼν ἄλλοθεν ἀργύριον, Ο οἴκοθεν ἐξέμολον μεμαὼς οὐ πρόσθ᾽ ἐπανελθεῖν Υ ὕψιστον κτᾶσθαι πρὶμ μ᾽ άγαθῶν ἄφενος· Τ τοὔνεκ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἐμπορίηισιν ἰῶν εἰς ἄστεα πολλὰ Ο ὄλβον ἀλωβήτος εὐρὺν ἐληισάμην Υ ὑμνητὸς δὲ πέλων πάτρην ἐτέεσσιν ἐσῖγμαι Ν νηρίθμοις τερπνός τ᾽ εὐμενέταις ἐφάνην· Α ἀμφοτέρους δ᾽ οἶκόν τε σεσηπότα πάτριον εἶθαρ Ρ ῥέξας ἐκ καινῆς κρέσσονα συντέλεσα Α αἶάν τ᾽ ἔς τύμβου πεπτωκότος ἄλλον ἔτευξα, Τ τὴν καὶ ζῶν στήλην ἐν ὁδῶι ἐπέθηκα λάλον. Ο οὕτως οὖν ζηλωτὰ τάδ᾽ ἔργματα συντελέσαντος Υ υἱέες υἱωνοί τ᾽ οἶκον ἔχοιεν ἐμοὖ. Nota: As often on Hellenistic inscriptions,

3658-455: The womb again, I onians bright and fair, to the chill stone; C haos in cry, Actaeon 's angry pack, H ounds of Molossus , shaggy wolves driven O ver Ampsanctus ' vale and Pentheus ' glade, L aelaps and Ladon , Dromas, Canace , A s these in fury harry brake and hill S o the great dogs of evil bay the world. M emory, Mother of Muses , be resigned U ntil King Saturn comes to rule again! R emember now no more

3720-448: The wooden horse into the city. The discoverer of this acrostic, Neil Adkin, points out that the same word πείθει occurs at more or less exactly the same line-numbers in a repeated line describing how Odysseus’ wife Penelope deceived the suitors in Odyssey 2.106 and 24.141. Another transliterated Greek word used as an acrostic in a pseudo-Sibylline prophecy has recently been noticed in

3782-408: The word Pindarum '(the poet) Pindar' has next to it the truncated acrostic PIN in a gamma formation. In the first poem of Horace's Epodes (which were also known as Iambi 'iambics'), the first two lines begin ibis ... amice , and it has been suggested that these words were deliberately chosen so that their initial letters IBI ... AM could be rearranged to read IAMBI. Towards the end of

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3844-519: Was cured of all beside — H is folly — pride — and passion — for he died. In 1939 Rolfe Humphries received a lifelong ban from contributing to Poetry magazine after he penned and attempted to publish "a poem containing a concealed scurrilous phrase aimed at a well-known person", namely Nicholas Murray Butler . The poem, entitled "An ode for a Phi Beta Kappa affair", was in unrhymed iambic pentameter , contained one classical reference per line, and ran as follows: N iobe 's daughters yearn to

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