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Henry Liddell Wants Better Bowels

“Liddell, in one of his letters, expresses a longing for the χαλκεντερία of the grammarian Didymus, untired by the drudgery of his monotonous toil.”

-Henry L. Thompson, Henry George Liddell: A Memoir (New York: Henry Holt and Co.) p. 73

The reference is to the 1st century grammarian Didymus Chalcenterus (= “brazen guts”) who received the latter half of his name as a (somewhat?) honorific epithet because he had written several thousand books.

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