4 JANUARY 1935, Page 10

Disturbing news reaches me about that hardest worked, of all

classical tags Tempora mutantur, nos et mutantur in illis. Everyone knows it as the most familiar of Horatian lines. Did not that greatest of living Horatians, Dr. T. E. Page, so ascribe it in his admirable salutation to The Times- on Monday ? Now it appears that it was written not by Horace at all but by some person calling himself Matthew Borbonius, who put it into the mouth of one of the Emperor Lothairs (or is it Emperors Lothair ?). What is more, the first word, it appears, should not be tempora _at all but omnia. All I can say is that if Horace did not write the line his omission is inexcusable. '