rro THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1
Sin,— Charges of plagiarism should never be lightly bandied, and I am far from suggesting that the author of the amusing dialogue on "Caesar's Wife," in your issue of May 3rd, has consciously borrowed from any earlier writer. But the resemblance to a passage in the HapoiproviwaTa (or "Side- Relishes ") of Pseudo-Pilatus Procax, though doubtless due to the fortuitous convergence of two brains working at a
distance of many centuries, is too remarkable to be over- looked. On turning up the dialogue between Caesar and Pompeia in my copy—a facsimile reprint of the noble Geneva Folio of 1611—I came across the following couplet :- Caesar: Simpliciter non fit, Pompeia ;
Pompeia : Crede mihi, °nines Nunc faciunt.
Caesar: Uxor Caesaris hand faciet.
Which may be roughly Englished thus :— Caesar: It simply isn't done, my dear. Pompeia: Why, everybody's doing it! Caesar : No, no, my dear, not Caesar's wife, or Caesar will be ruing it.
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