Hammered
Sir: In my zeal to nail Gore Vidal's etymo- logical pretensions (Books, 9 October), I now realise that I struck myself on the thumb in one regard: as Patrick Leigh Fer- mor kindly wrote to tell me, there is a mas- culine form of the ancient-Greek word for whore, pomos, as well as the more fre- quently used pome (and its derivatives). As it is listed separately from the other porn- words in Liddell and Scott, I missed it, which is idle of me. I remain fairly confi- dent that the origin of 'pornography' was not in writing only about catamites, but I was certainly wrong about the non-exis- tence of pomos. I apologise to Mr Vidal and to your readers. On all other counts, my remarks are, of course, beyond dispute.
Frederic Raphael
Lagardelle, 24170 St Laurent-la-Vallee, France
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