Cultivated plants and domestic animals in their migration from Asia to Europe / by Victor Hehn ; edited by James Steven Stallybrass.
- Victor Hehn
- Date:
- 1891
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Cultivated plants and domestic animals in their migration from Asia to Europe / by Victor Hehn ; edited by James Steven Stallybrass. Source: Wellcome Collection.
473/530 page 473
![we durst connect the Greek datpvii with Styio, ct^eut, Stxf/uj, in the original sense of to moisten, to soak. But against this is the Thessalian Sauxra in the compound word apxt'^at;X,'o'0oiO€l(TaG in Boeckh, C. I., No. 1766, as well as the Savxrog for laurel now restored in two passages of Nicander (Ther. 94, and Alexiph. 199). Hence some would derive the word from a root meaning to burn (Legerlotz in Kuhn’s Zeitschr., 7) 293), so that the laurel would still be a tree used for purifying, only not by rinsing but by aromatic fumigation (Paul., Efiit., ed. O. Muller p. 117:“ Itaque eandem lauruin omnibus suffttionibus adhiberi solitum erat”). In that case would the l in laurus stand for d, as in several other Latin words? According to Hesychius, the Pergaeans in Asia Minor said \a<pvi/ for Scapi'i], and he gives another word which, because of its derivation with r, nearly approaches the Latin : tivapeia' 1) lv toTq Te/xTretn Sacpi'i]. If the Greek word is derived from an Asiatic language, then, of course, any attempt to explain it etymologically from the Greek is vain. Mi'proe (pvpmvrj, pvppivrj, pvpivi7) is also an Oriental word, for it cannot be separated from pvpov, pippci, cpvpva. In the oldest times, the shrubs whose leaves or exuding gum served for per- fumes were not strictly distinguished. To the passages quoted in the text we may add Serv. ad. Virg. /£n., 3, 23, where Myrene, a beautiful girl, and priestess of Venus, wishing to marry a youth, is changed by the goddess into a myrtus. That the idea of sorrow, as Movers, 1, 243, has it, is contained in the name of Myrrha, the daughter of Cinyras, is from what has been noticed above impossible. Note 51, page 175. Schneider remarks on the passage quoted from Theophrastus : “ Is (Plinius) igitu r aut plura in suo libro scrip ta legit, aut aliunde ins emit Mithridatis nomen P Pliny could not well find the name of Mithridates in his copy of Theophrastus, who lived 200 years before Mithridates. An example of learned absence of mind ! Note 52, page 179. Must not the tree, on the contrary, have first acquired its Greek name -kv^oq, from its use in the finer kinds of wood-carving and cabinet-making? There can be no doubt that the word belongs to 7rrvaaoj; but the fundamental idea cannot be flexible, as Benfey sup- poses in his Dictionary of Roots, for the box-tree has exactly the oppo- site quality ; as little can it mean the crumpledcrooked shrub, as Grimm supposed, for 7rnWw means just the contrary; to fold, to dispose in layers, to splice, to fit boards together. Homer has already tttvx*q](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24874309_0473.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
