EST. TU?
LAST Friday, the Independent gave Nicho- las Garland's cartoon the place of honour on its front page. His picture derived from the photograph of Mrs Thatcher standing among industrial desolation in Teesside. The caption was 'If you seek for a monu- ment, gaze around'. This was not what Garland had written. His caption was `Si monumentum requiris, circumspice'. It had been changed after 40 per cent of the Independent's news conference had confes- sed that they did not know what the Latin meant (and so, presumably, did not know that it was Christopher Wren's epitaph). Does this mean that no Latin sentence or phrase can be used unexplained in a newspaper? Certainly not 'Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes', neither DuIce et de- corum est pro patria mori'; perhaps 'sic' and,`RIP' may still survive. '0 tempora, 0 mores', one might exclaim, if one thought that anyone was likely to know what one meant. In fact, however, the Independent's caution was mistaken. If the Latin had appeared those who understood it would at once have felt flattered; those who did not know what it meant would either have kept their heads down and not owned up, or they would have engaged in the enjoyable pursuit of discovering its meaning. Broad- sheet newspapers are supposed to be for educated people: one of the features of being educated is that one is not totally flummoxed when one comes across some- thing which one does not understand.
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