Ashby-de-la-Zouch.
_Palindromical Lines_ (Vol. vii., pp. 178. 366.).--Besides the
_habitats_ already given for the Greek inscription on a font, I have
notes of the like at Melton Mowbray; St. Mary's, Nottingham; in the
private chapel at Longley Castle; and at Hadleigh. At this last place,
it is noted in a church book to be taken out of Gregory Nazienzen (but I
never could find it), and a reference is made to Jeremy Taylor's _Great
Exemplar_, "Discourse on Baptism," p. 120. sect. 17.
It may be worth noticing that this Gregory was, for a short time, in the
fourth century, bishop of Constantinople; and in the Moslemised
cathedral of St. Sophia, in that city, according to Grelot, quoted in
Collier's _Dictionary_, the same words--with the difference that "sin"
is put in the plural, _sic_:
"~NIPSON ANOMÊMATA MÊ MONAN OPSIN~"--
were written in letters of gold over the place at the entrance of the
church, between two porphyry pillars, where stood two urns of marble
filled with water, the use of which, when it was a Christian temple,
must be well known. The Turks now use them for holding drinking water,
and have probably done so since the time when the church was turned into
a mosque, after the conquest of Constantinople by Mahomet II., in the
fifteenth century. What could induce ZEUS (p. 366.) to call this
inscription "sotadic?" It may more fitly be called holy.