Robert Graves recalls his first meeting with T. E. Lawrence, who as already famous for his desert exploits and was writing them up from notes as the book Seven Pillars of Wisdom:
The first time I met him... was in February or March 1920, It was a guest-night at All Souls, where he had been awarded a seven-years’ Fellowship... I was only an accidental guest and knew nobody there. Lawrence was talking to the Regius Professor of Divinity about the influence of the Syrian Greek philosophers on early Christianity and especially of the importance of the University of Gadara close to the Lake of Galilee. He mentioned that St. James had quoted one of the Gadarene philosophers (I think Mnasalcus) in his Epistle. He went on to speak of Meleager and the other Syrian-Greek contributors to the Greek Anthology, and of their poems in Syrian of which he intended to publish an English translation and which were as good as (or better than) their poems in Greek. This interested me, and I said something about a morning-star image which Meleager had used in rather an un-Greek way. Lawrence then said: ‘You must be Graves the poet? I read a book of yours in Egypt in 1917 and thought it pretty good.’ This was embarrassing, but kind. He began asking me what the younger poets were doing now: he was out of touch, I told him what I knew.
I've started writing an article about the Graves-Lawrence-Meleager connection; it may come to nothing but I'm intrigued by the blend of true/plausible modern context and blatantly made-up ancient content. The passage is from a volume of reminiscences edited by Lawrence's brother to cement his legacy. Thrifty Graves used the passage in his memoir Goodbye to All That as well, but that time he left out the most blatant fib, which I've emboldened above. Mnasalcus is made-up, too, and there was no University of Gadara. Likely to come back to this at least once.
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