Any accounts that remain of the great Carthaginian Captain's Cornish namesake, may perhaps tend to show that he had preferred the "otium cum dignitate" of literary leisure to the turmoil of the battle of life, and to the use of the harness, whether civil or military, that it had forced him to wear.
C. Forbes.
Temple.
[J. V. S. suggests, "May it not in its complete state be 'Tandem Deo, Optimo et Maximo,' and its translation, 'When all is done, let praise be to God most mighty and most beneficent?'" and X. Z. says, "Possibly, 'Tandem desiderato opere mactus'—not, I think, a very choice specimen of Latinity, but perhaps good enough for a fly-leaf.">[
Tandem D. O. M. (Vol. iii., p. 62.).—Is not D. O. M. the common abbreviation for "Deo Optimo Maximo?" and so the whole phrase an acknowledgment by the painful (and probably pious) collector of the most interesting library referred to, of his thanks to God on having "at length" obtained possession of some long-coveted folio, or vainly-sought-for edition?
J. Eastwood.
Ecclesfield.
D. O. M.—I am emboldened by the Query respecting "Tandem D. O. M. (Vol. iii., p. 62.) to ask, what is the solution of D. O. M.? On the head of a tombstone, the inscription is frequent on the continent. I am aware that it is interpreted "Deo Optimo Maximo" when occurring in the dedication of a church; but it appears on a tomb to supply the place of our M.S., or the D. M. of the Romans. Can any of your readers give me the true meaning? It must be well known, I should think, to all who have studied inscriptions. As I am indebted to Faber Marinus for an excuse for putting this Query, it is only courteous to suggest a solution to his D. O. M.—may it be "Datus omnino Musis?"
Ωω.