ABSTRACT
Let me begin obliquely, with a vignette for which it is hard to imagine a Greek equivalent. Following the death of the Poet Laureate Robert Bridges in 1930, the greatest Latinist of his day, the scholar and poet A. E. Housman, was asked by Bridges’ widow to peruse a proposed memorial inscription. We learn from a letter that part of the wording had puzzled Housman (2007: 242).
The phrase which I took for te decet hymnis was not familiar to me, and I supposed that the construction was elliptical (for te decet hymnis celebrare </> or the like). But as you seem to know it, and to know that hymnus is the regular form, it is probable that I miscopied what Dr Bridges wrote.
