Lat ora 'end, rope', Grk. peirar

Lat. ōra ‘end’ and ora ‘rope’ and Gk. πεῖραρ Michael Weiss Departments of Linguistics and Classics, Cornell University APA, Philadelphia, January 7, 2012 I. The data A. ōra ‘end, edge, border’ from which derive by plausible and demonstrable semantic innovations the sense ‘sea-coast’ and ‘region.’ 1. Cic. Fin. 2. 102: infinitasque regiones, quarum nulla esset ora, nulla extremitas and unbounded regions with no endpoint, no extremity 2. The most plausible etymology of ōra was found by Sturtevant 1942:48 who compared Hitt. arḫ(a)- ‘border’ < *h1orh2- <— *h1erh2- ‘divide’.1 For the details of the morphological analysis see Weiss 1998:43; Differently Kloekhorst 2010:245, but not in a way that challenges the AnatoloItalic connection. B ora ‘hawser’ 1. All four examples occur in only two authors, neither from the archaic period. All four are in nautical or figuratively nautical contexts. Liv. 22.19.10: cum alii resolutis oris in ancoras euehuntur When some, the hawsers loosened, swung out on to their anchors. Liv. 28.36.11: orasque et ancoras ne in moliendo mora esset praecidunt They cut the ropes and anchors to avoid delay in weighing them. Quint. Inst. 4.2.41: sublatae sunt ancorae, soluimus oram The anchors were weighed. We loosed the rope. Quint. pr. 3: oram soluentibus bene precemur Let’s offer up prayer as they let loose the hawser. II. Homophony or polysemy? A. Homophony 1. Walde-Hoffmann 1938:219 connected with hesitation ora ‘hawser’ with ōreae ‘bit.’ 1 So also Laroche 1968. 1 2. Weiss 1998:44-45 n. 28 suggested implausibly that the meaning ‘knot’ could derive from a distinct verbal derivative of the root *h1erh2- meaning ‘thing to be loosened,’ but left open the possibility that ora was a piece of seamen’s slang. B. Polysemy The OLD and Ernout-Meillet (466) consider it possible that ora ‘hawser’ is ultimately the same as ora ‘end, border’ without offering any explanation of the semantic development. There have been to my knowledge two serious attempts at explanation of this development. 1. F. G. Moore 1943 Loeb edition of Livy Vol. VII p. 147: ‘shores’ for ‘shore cables.’ Nothing definitive can be argued against this metonymy. Metonymy seems to be rather rare in Latin prose and this particular metonymy has no obvious parallels. 2. Niedermann 1931 took ora ‘rope’ as the basic meaning from which the meaning ‘border’ was derived. Niedermann cited the well-established ancient practice of measuring of parcels of land with ropes. Niedermann’s is the only article quoted by Ernout-Meillet (466) and the T.L.L. Niedermann’s idea is still handed down (without attribution) in Beekes 2011:1163 s.v. πεῖραρ. a. Hdt. 1.66 δώσω τοι .. καλὸν πεδίον σχοίνωι διαµετρήσασθαι b. OHG seil ‘rope’ in the compound lantmez-seil ‘land-measuring-rope’ OHG reif ‘rope’ glossing funis and in the plural reifa ‘parcel of land’ glossing territorium (Pa., Ra., K.) Cf. ME rape (one of the six administrative district of Sussex) c. In support of his argument he cited some examples of words that allegedly mean both ‘rope’ and ‘border’ or words meaning ‘border’ which have cognates meaning ‘rope.’ i. Gk. πεῖραρ ii. Ved. sīmán- according to Niedermann ‘border’ ~ Gk. ἱµάς ‘rope’ iii. Gk. ὅρος Myc. wo-wo < PGk. *u̯ óru̯ os ~ Lith. virvė̃ ‘rope, string’, OCS vrŭvĭ ‘rope’ d. Against Niedermann i. The relative date of the meanings: the meaning ‘rope’ appears only in relatively late authors. ii. The specific meaning of ora ‘hawser’ and its naval connections are unexpected and unexplained. iii. Ved. sīmán- (AV +) means ‘a part in the hair’ or later ‘border’. It cannot be 2 ́ (RV +) ‘furrow’ and is unlikely to be related to Gk. ἱµάς, but instead separated from sītā is probably to be connected with Gk. ἰθύς ‘straight’. iv. There are competing etymologies for PGk. *u̯ óru̯ os. The best would connect *u̯ óru̯ os with Latin urvāre ‘to mark out boundaries by a furrow’ (Pompon. dig. 50.16.239.6 urbare est aratro definire). v. Although it seems undeniable that Gk. πεῖραρ can mean both ‘boundary’ and ‘rope,’ it is equally clear that the original meaning cannot be ‘rope.’ a. This is shown by the Vedic cognate párur, párvan-, which has the basic meaning ‘joint’, from which develop the further senses ‘limb’ and ‘end point of a time period.’ b. Gk. πεῖραρ and Vedic párur continue a PIE neuter r-/n-stem *péru̯ r̥, *pr̥- u̯ én- derived from the verbal root *per- ‘traverse, cross’ (OAves. fra-frā ‘I will traverse,’ Gk. πείρω ‘traverse, pierce’ etc. LIV2:472). g. The meaning of this verbal abstract must in the first instance have been ‘crossing,’ then more concretely ‘crossing point.’ Cf. PDE ‘border crossing.’ d. The place where someone or something crosses from one thing to another can be regarded as an end (whence the meaning of Gk. πεῖραρ) or as the transitional point between the two items (whence the meaning of Ved. párur). α. This seems preferable to Hoffmann’s interpretation of Vedic párur ‘joint’ as the place where the sacrificial knife can cut through (i.e. cross through) the limbs without hitting a bone. This would require the other Vedic senses and the use of párur for human joints to be based on sacrificial terminology. 3. Although most of Niedermann’s parallels do not hold water, the evidence of πεῖραρ, which Niedermann was the first to bring into the discussion of ora, favors the theory of polysemy. C. The Semantic history of πεῖραρ 1. πεῖραρ ‘rope’ a. Passages in Epic where πεῖραρ seems to mean ‘rope’ Od. 12.51 (the ropes with which Odysseus was bound to the mast) ἐξ αὐτοῦ πείρατ᾽ ἀνήφθω (also 12.162, 179 with ἀνῆπτον) Let the πείρατα be fastened from it (the mast). 3 Il. 13.358-360 (Zeus and Poseidon urge on the opposite sides) τοὶ δ᾽ ἔριδος κρατερῆς καὶ ὁµοιίου πτολέµοιο πεῖραρ ἐπαλλάξαντες ἐπ’ ἄµφοτέροισι τάνυσσαν, ἄρρηκτόν τ᾽ ἄλυτον τε, τὸ πολλῶν γούνατ᾽ ἔλυσεν Alternately, they (Zeus and Poseidon) pulled taught the rope of violent strife and equal war over both sides—unbreakable, not to be undone, that undid the knees of many. (Translation Janko 1994:92) b. Passages in Epic where πεῖραρ is sometimes alleged to mean ‘rope’ Il. 7.402 (Diomedes predicts doom for the Trojans) Τρώεσσιν ὀλέθρου πείρατ᾽ ἐφῆπται The πείρατα of destruction are fixed for the Trojans. Od. 22.33 (The suitors are ignorant of their fate) πᾶσιν ὀλέθρου πείρατ᾽ ἐφῆπτο The πείρατα of destruction were fixed for them all. In these two passages ‘ropes’ seems plausible but ‘ends’ cannot be excluded. Cf. Il. 6.143, 20.429 ὀλέθρου πείραθ᾽ ἵκηαι h.Ap. 129 (Baby Apollo breaks his bonds after being fed nectar and ambrosia) οὐδ᾽ ἔτι δεσµά σ᾽ ἔρυκε, λύοντο δὲ πείρατα πάντα No longer did the bonds hold you, but all the πείρατα were loosened. This last example is almost certainly not a case of πείρατα = ‘ropes’ since the “ropes” are the δεσµά. πείρατα means ‘ends where the ropes are knotted’. 2. Πεῖραρ is a much-studied word. Between 1972 and 1978 two articles, one book chapter, and one book were devoted just to this one word.2 All three works attempt to explain how the word could come to mean both ‘end’ and ‘rope’. But all suffer from a surprisingly unhistorical and uncomparative way of looking at semantic change. a. Heubeck 1972 starts from the formula ὀλέθρου πείρατ᾽ ἐφῆπται (Il. 7.402, Il. 12.79). i. According to Heubeck, ὀλέθρου is an appositive genitive. So the whole phrase means something like ‘the end that is destruction has been fixed.’ Subsequently we have Dührsen 1994 (on Hes. Th. 335 πείρασιν ἐν µεγάλοις ‘in the great coils’) and Giannakis 2003 (non vidi). See the LfGE s.v. (G. Markwald) for further bibliography. 2 4 ii. The combination of πείρατα with ἐφάπτω led to a mis-/re-interpretation of πείρατα as a concrete item, namely ‘rope’ used metaphorically: ‘the ropes of destruction have been fastened.’ iii. On the basis of this misinterpretation a new meaning ‘rope’ was created and used by the poet who composed Od. 12.51, 162, 179. Janko endorses this view.3 iv. Against Heubeck we may make two points: α. Would the combination of πείρατα with ἐφάπτω really be ambiguous enough to suggest a reinterpretation? It is noteworthy that the middle form ἐφάπται is regularly used in precisely the meaning required here, e.g., Il. 2.15 κήδε’ ἐφάπται. β. Heubeck’s theory explains the semantic development as the result of a misinterpretation within a poetic tradition and thus not as a fact of everyday speech. But this would separate the explanation of the two meanings of πεῖραρ from that of the two meanings of ora. b. Detienne and Vernant 1974 “The Circle and The Bond” (English trans. 1978:291): Thus the problem is not to deduce one meaning from another but rather to understand what kind of relationship the Greeks may have established between a path and a bond and how it is that the sense ‘binding’ of the word peîrar—a meaning which appears quite different from that of ‘journeying’ which is suggested by other contexts—may in fact simply be a variation of the latter meaning. The answer to these problems are to be found in the semantic field of peîrar: here we find one particular type of path which takes the form of a bond which fetters and, conversely, the action of binding is sometimes presented as a crossing, a way forward. i. This “explanation” is unacceptable since it conflates the semantics of πόρος ‘way’ with πεῖραρ. In support of this Detienne and Vernant mention Xerxes’ bridge over the Hellespont as a kind of πόρος that binds together Europe and Asia (1978:291-2), but it is not the pontoon bridge which is called a πόρος in Herodotus 7.37, but the Hellespont itself which is the subject of yoking. ii. Neither this passage nor any other cited by Detienne and Vernant allows us to infer that the semantic element of ‘binding’ was inherent in the meaning of πόρος, let alone πεῖραρ. c. Bergren 1975 starts from a meaning ‘boundaries’ for πείρατα. She explains the Odyssey passages (12.51) as follows (p. 39): 3 Although Janko also endorses what we believe is the correct explanation (1994:92): “‘throw me the end’ became ‘throw me the rope’.” 5 Here πείρατα seems to mean simply, the “bonds”, just as a country is “bound” by the πείρατα γαίης. In fact, the sum of these two senses of the word suggests that fundamentally πείρατα denotes not a concrete material in itself, like a rope, but rather anything that binds or defines, i.e. that which forms the limit of the outward extension of anything. i. But this explanation is wordplay and not etymology in the modern sense. A “definition” indeed would be something that forms the limit of the outward extension of anything, but how is this necessarily true of a “binding”? Contrary to what Bergren implies, I don’t think any native speaker of English could come up with a natural sentence where bind could be substituted for define without a significant change in meaning. Incidentally, the words bond and bound(ary) are unrelated. Bond, a variant of band, is a derivative of the verb bind, ptc. bound (OE bindan, bunden). Bound in the sense ‘boundary’ <— OFr. bodne < LLat. butina (Leg. Ripuar.) = meta, limes, of unknown origin. d. Nothdurft 1978 gives the basic meaning as ‘Verbindung als Durch- oder Übergang’. He has no specific discussion of the Odyssey passages and the definition has all the vagueness one would expect from a non-historical application of the combinatory method. D. Πεῖραρ, ora, end and Ende 1. Note that all the passages having ora ‘rope’ and the one passage that most probably has πείρατα in the sense of ‘rope’ occur in nautical contexts either literally or figuratively. This makes it plausible to look for parallels in the nautical vocabulary of other languages. 2. Karl Hoffmann noted in connection with πείρατα that in German nautical language Ende is used in the sense of Tau because in tying up a ship it is not the entire rope that is thrown to another but just the end. Hoffmann’s information can be confirmed in any large German dictionary. Cf. especially the idiom das Ende fieren ‘to slacken the rope’. The interpretation of πεῖραρ as end of the rope goes back to Apollonius Sophistes (Lex. Hom. 129.16: τὸ πέρας τοῦ σχοινίου) and was championed by Björck 1937. The comparison with German nautical language is found already in Ameis-Hentze-Cauer who noted that “Ende nennen Unsre Matrosen jedes Tau.” (note to Od. 22.33). 3. In fact English also uses ‘end’ in this sense: OED 6 b Naut. Cable’s end or simply end: the last length of a cable 1882 G. S. Nares, Seamanship: Have plenty of end in the bows ready to make fast This may also be the source of the idiom ‘bitter end,’ although I have my doubts about this: 6 1627 Captain Smith, Seaman’s Grammar vii. 30: A Bitter is but the turne of a Cable about the Bits... and the Bitters end is that part of the cable that doth stay within boord. 4. These parallels from living languages make it certain that the semantic development from ‘end’ to ‘rope’ is a perfectly natural feature of sailor-speak. It is a simple synecdoche. Typologically we might compare ‘joint’ which in the language of butchers has spread from ‘the point where two limbs are joined’ to ‘the portion of meat that starts at such a point.’ 5. One more potential parallel. The regular word in Latin for ‘hawser’ is fūnis, which immediately calls to mind fīnis ‘end.’ a. The possibility of a connection between these two words was already raised by Niedermann in terms of his untenable theory. Niedermann suggested that fīnis < *feinis and fūnis < *foinis, which could be interpreted as different generalizations of the root ablaut of an acrostatic i-stem. Unfortunately, the ī of fīnis is not the result of a monophthongization because it is already present in Old Latin e.g. APVR FINEM (CIL 12.5, 4th/3rd cent. BCE). b. It is possible to make the phonology work. Fīnis could be derived from a zero-grade (ī < *ihx or other possible source) and fūnis from an o-grade (immediate pre-form *foinis). Next to the ograde a laryngeal would regularly have been lost by de Saussure’s Law. Cf. Lat. uīnum and Fal. uino < *u̯ ihxno- vs. Gk. (ϝ)οἶνος < *u̯ oihxno-. c. Morphologically, it is possible to unify both a zero-grade and an o-grade in the same paradigm, but there are other possible connections for fūnis, e.g. with fīlum ‘thread’, and there are no traces of any meaning other than ‘rope’ for fūnis. References Ameis-Hentze-Cauer. 1905-1922. Ilias, für den Schulgebrauch erklärt von C. F. Ameis und C. Hentze. 7th ed. by Paul Cauer, Leipzig. Beekes, R. S. P. 2010. Etymological dictionary of Greek. Leiden. Bergren, A. T. L. 1975. The etymology and usage of πεῖραρ in early Greek poetry. New York. Björck, G. 1937. PEIRAR, in Mélanges Émile Boisacq, Annuaire de l’institut de philologie et d’histoire orientales et slaves, Tome V, 143-148 Detienne, M. and Vernant, J.-P., 1974. Les ruses de l'intelligence: la métis des Grecs, Paris. Trans. Janet Lloyd, Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society, 1978, New Jersey. Dührsen, N. C. 1994 “πείρασιν ἐν µεγάλοις (Hes. Th. 335).” WJA 20:88–90. Giannakis, G. 2003. “Greek πεῖραρ, Sanskrit párvata- and related terms.” In S. Adhami (ed.), Paitimana: Essays in Iranian, Indo-European, and Indian Studies in Honor of Hans-Peter Schmidt, 1-12. Costa Mesa. Heubeck, A. 1972. “Nochmal zur innerhomerischen Chronologie.” Glotta 50:129–43. Hoffmann, K. 1974. “Ved. dhánuṣ- und páruṣ-.” Die Sprache 20:15–25. Janko, R. 1994. The Iliad: A commentary, vol. 4, New York. Kloekhorst, A. 2010. Etymological Dictionary of the Hittite Inherited Lexicon. Leiden. Laroche, E. 1968. “Correspondences lexicales hittites latines et grecques.” RPh 42:246–7. 7 LIV = Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben2, edited by Helmut Rix, Wiesbaden 2001. Niedermann, M. 1931. “Zur lateinischen und griechischen Wortgeschichte.” Glotta 19:1–15. Nothdurft, W. 1978. “Noch einmal πεῖραρ/πείρατα bei Homer.” Glotta 56:25–40. Sturtevant, E. 1942. The Indo-Hittite laryngeals. Baltimore. Walde, A. and Hofmann J. B. 1938-1954. Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg. Weiss, M. 1998. “Erotica: On the prehistory of Greek desire.” HSCPh 98:31–61. 8