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From: bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys)
Newsgroups: net.astro
Subject: Re: Galileo's Anagram
Message-ID: <687@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Oct-84 12:12:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.687
Posted: Tue Oct 23 12:12:59 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Oct-84 06:45:23 EDT
References: <951@phs.UUCP>
Organization: UTexas Astronomy Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 28

>In Evan Connell's "Points for a Compass Rose," which is a fascinating
>book having nothing do do with astronomy, I came across the following:
>
>     "Galileo, having recognized the phases of Venus
>     and anxious to claim credit without revealing
>     what he had learned until he could verify it,
>     published the anagram: *Haec immatura a me jam
>     frustra leguntur, o.y.* I've gathered this too soon.
>     Or, these letters could be rearranged to read:
>     *Cynthiae figuras aemulatur mater amorum.*
>     The mother of Love follows the phases of Diana."
>
>The book is a strange mixture of the bizarre but true and the
>flagrantly untrue; does any astrobuff out there know if this
>story is true? And for that matter, just what Galileo meant in
>the rearranged version? (I'm no astronomer.)

A true story.  It was common to stake ones claim to priority in 
those days by publishing anagrams.  The point about the rearranged
version is that Venus (the Roman Goddess of Love) has phases just
as does the Moon (Diana, in Roman mythology).
-- 
"One good horselaugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"

	Bill Jefferys  8-%
	Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712   (USnail)
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