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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
‘…as the name of the second letter of the alphabet beta (Greek) is curtailed to be. This could be expressed by substituting quod for sed: “What I am in Latin when incomplete (non tota), I am called in Greek complete.”’ So most recently Shackleton Bailey. Read rather the verse aloud to solve the riddle, tota heard as Greek would be τωτα, i.e. τῷ τα (τῷ being written τ⋯ at this period):
My name is whole (with a TA) in Greek, but I am not whole (with a TA) in Latin.
The strained use of the instrumental dative τῷ τα would be objectionable, were the poet writing continuous Greek as such. But as a pun concealed within the Latin word tota, this secondary meaning and construction should be tolerated. The conceit is in fact rather clever. What are the chances of tota admitting so apt a sense, when heard as Greek, as a result of coincidence alone and not design?
1 Bailey, D. R. Shackleton, Towards a Text of ‘Anthologia Latina’. Cambridge Philological Society supplementary volume no. 5 (Cambridge, 1979), p. 39Google Scholar.
2 The use of the definite article here, τ⋯ τα = ‘a TA’, is of course standard usage in the technical Greek of the grammarians.
3 For a comparable pun involving Greek concealed in Latin see Martial 1. 50: Si tibi Mistyllus cocus, Aemiliane, vocatur, | dicatur quare non Taratalla mihi? The poet is playing with the Homeric formula μ⋯στυλλ⋯ν τ' ἄρα τἆλλα (Il. 1. 465, al.). So too in Greek, with a play on a Latin word, AP 10. 44. 4 (Palladas): οὐκ ⋯θ⋯λω Δ⋯μινε, οὐ γ⋯ρ ἔχω δ⋯μεναι.