Hate and debate Rome through the world has spread;
Yet Roma amor is, if backward read:
Then is it strange Rome hate should foster? No;
For out of backward love all hate doth grow.
It is said that the cabalists among the Jews were professed anagrammatists, the third part of their art called themuru (changing) being nothing more than finding the hidden and mystical meaning in names, by transposing and differently combining the letters of those names. Thus, of the letters of Noah’s name in Hebrew, they made grace; and of the Messiah they made he shall rejoice.
Lycophron, a Greek writer who lived three centuries before the Christian era, records two anagrams in his poem on the siege of Troy entitled Cassandra. One is on the name of Ptolemy Philadelphus, in whose reign Lycophron lived:—
ΠΤΟΛΕΜΑΙΣ ΑΠΟ ΜΕΛΙΤΟΣ—Made of honey.
The other is on Ptolemy’s queen, Arsinoë:—
ΑΡΣΙΝΟΕ. ΕΡΑΣ ΙΟΝ—Juno’s violet.
Eustachius informs us that this practice was common among the Greeks, and gives numerous examples; such, for instance, as the transposition of the word Αρετη, virtue, into Ερατη, lovely.