Two different classicists on the CLASSICS-L list, which is primarily
made up of university professors, have already come forward to say
that none of these are real quotes and that Kipling made them all up.
Ralph Hancock <[log in to unmask]> was the first to reply:
I'm just going on instinct here, but I believe that every one of these
epigrams was coined by Kipling himself. They smell of Kipling, not of any
classical author. I think that to Kipling himself they seemed impeccably
classical in style, but to us, later, they seem all of a kind. It's like
van Meegeren's Vermeer fakes, completely plausible to his contemporaries;
but to us, later, the typical van Meegeren 1930s-style simpering faces are
glaringly obvious.
And then Mark Davidson <[log in to unmask]> said:
These epigraphs were all written by Kipling, although some of them are in a
faux-classical style. They are not quotations, and I'm surprised that
anyone would think they were. If they were actual quotations, Kipling would
have credited the authors. As far as I know, they have never been
attributed to anyone else, least of all by Kipling himself.
It's also a mistake to think that the 'Horace Odes' of Kipling are genuine
translations. They are original poems in a style reminiscent of Horace.
This is immediately apparent, since Kipling attributes them to 'Book V' -
and there are only four books of Odes by Horace. Any educated person of
Kipling's time would have known that....
As the Kipling Society says itself in the notes on this poem, "This is
another of Kipling’s poems in imitation of the Roman poet Horace".
http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/rg_lastode1.htm
They don't say, but they should, that Nov. 27, 8 BC was the date of
Horace's death.
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