A Glossary of Later Latin to 600 A.D.

496 Pages·1949·40.671 MB·Latin, English

by  Alexander Souter

DIRETTO
School of Theology at Claremont
Theology Library
SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
AT CLAREMONT
California

chem
REN
^ A GLOSSARY OF.
LATER LATIN
TO 600 A.D.
COMPILED BY
ALEXANDER SOUTER
SOMETIME REGIUS PROFESSOR OF HUMANITY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN
^J OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
x
Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.4
GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON
BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI
CAPE TOWN IBADAN NAIROBI ACCRA SINGAPORE
Theology Library
SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
AT CLAREMONT
California
FIRST EDITION I949
REPRINTED LITHOGRAPHICALLY IN GREAT BRITAIN
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD
FROM CORRECTED SHEETS OF THE FIRST EDITION
1957
PREFACE
Wes plans were being made for a new Oxford Latin Dictionary, it was
decided not to include in the main work writers who flourished later
than about A.D. 180. Thus Christian Latin authors were excluded. But it was
thought advisable to supplement the work by a separate brief glossary of the
new forms, meanings, and phrases which appear for the first time after that
date, so that students might have some help in reading authors like Ausonius,
Claudian, and Ammian, or the City of God and Confessions of St. Augustine,
or the Letters of St. Jerome.
When this decision had been reached, the question arose to what date the
glossary should extend. It was obvious that no attempt could be made to
cover such an extent of ground as will be investigated by those researchers
who are collecting material for a hew Ducange. It might have been possible
to continue as far as Isidore of Seville (636) or as far as the Venerable Bede
(735). Each of these two was the greatest writer of his own day in Europe,
but of the larger part of their writings we still lack critical editions which
would indicate the written sources fromywhich their works were largely com-
piled. Neither author is typical of his time, moreover, and the modern reader
of Latin written just after the middle of the sixth certtuty: or of such works as
the translations of Oribasius, which belong to the same,century, already sees
clear signs that the traditional Latin grammar is breaking up. But to have
stopped at a.D. 450 would have excluded Boethius, Gregory the Great,
Gregory of Tours, Caesarius of Arles, and Cassiodorus, each a writer of special
importance in his own way. The end of the sixth century (A.D. 600) was there-
fore chosen as the limit for our purpose.
The great work of Forcellini was entitled Lexicon Totius Latinitatis, though
as a matter of fact he had left unread a number of writings of value, especially
such as had not been composed in Italy. But the compilers whose work
is based on his, Freund, Andrews, Riddle-White, and Lewis-Short, did not
recognize the real situation and their ‘canons covering the whole field of
Latinity often crumble, when sifted, into an inference from Forcellini’s
silence'.! Lexicographers like De Vit, Georges, Mayor, Nettleship, von
Paucker, Quicherat, Rónsch, and von Wolfflin, whose work is incorporated in
great part in the handy compilation of Benoist-Goelzer (1893 and later) and
in the Laterculi Vocum Latinarum of Gradenwitz (1904), have been able to fill
up many gaps in the work of those who followed Forcellini. It has been my
own good fortune, during a period of half a century, to discover yet further
missing words.? I have also made use of Arnaldo (1939).
The present work was in effect begun about half a century ago when, in
imitation of my dear master Mayor, I began to add words and examples to a
copy of Lewis and Short. 'The margins of the first copy became after about
five years so crowded that I had to purchase a second, which in its turn has
become just as full. Into a third, interleaved, I copied a number of
classical examples from Professor Mayor's annotated copies. The inclusion
of more than a very small fraction of all these examples was forbidden by the
plan of this book, but the information which they furnish lies behind many
of its brief statements.
1 J. E. B. Mayor in his Commentary on Pliny's Letters, Book III (London, 1880),
p. viii. ; ;
2 Cf. Archiv für lateinische Lexikographie x (1898), 412, 541—3,.xi (1900), 129-31;
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae i (1900), p. v, iii (1906—12), p. vi, and later.
iv . PREFACE
I have, of course, been deeply indebted to the T'hesaurus Linguae Latinae,
to which I myself contributed material for the parts of the alphabet mean-
time covered by that great work, namely, A—Exhorresco, F—Homicidium,
I—Inclutus, and M—Membrum, as well as for the rest of the alphabet. Next,
I must express my indebtedness to the three annotated copies of Lewis-Short
which belonged to the late Professor Mayor and were used by him to make
entries down to 1910. These were lent to the Delegates of the Clarendon
Press by the kindness of the University Librarian, Cambridge: they bear the
press-marks Adv. e. 78, 79, and 80-1 respectively. Many of the notes in
those volumes were taken by Mayor from the work of other investigators, but
there remains a large body of annotations derived from his own reading of
texts. I have revised and corrected many references to texts that have been
superseded since the notes were made. I also owe much to the other lexico-
graphers mentioned in an earlier paragraph.
The staff of the Oxford Latin Dictionary, past and present, have rendered
me valuable help. I would refer in particular to a list (prepared under the
direction of Mr. J. M. Wyllie) of words for which 'slips' had been made and
which will occur in the Dictionary, and also to the numerous 'slips' derived
from an independent reading of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum by
another member of the staff, Mr. E. A. Parker of Brasenose College, who at
my request noted examples for the period after A.D. 180.
The new Liddell and Scott has helped me especially with Greek technical
terms which had either fully or imperfectly acquired droit de cité in Latin.
The Glossary is intended to include all known ‘common’ words that,
according to the witness of surviving writings and documents, do not occur
in the period before A.D. 180 and yet may be certainly or reasonably assigned
to a date earlier than A.D. 600. No doubt many of these words existed in the
earlier period, though not definitely attested for it. For example, an adverb
occurs in Plautus but the adjective from which it comes is not cited before
the late period.’ Again, the oldest example of cineresco given by the Thesau-
rus is in Tertullian, but an inscription found in 1912 lends probability to the
view that it was already used by D. Laberius, the republican writer of mimes.
Very few ' proper' names have been recorded, in fact, only some that seemed
to have special interest or importance, or about which I am in a position to give
information not generally accessible. Under Jesus, for instance, I endeavour
to explode once and for all the ingenious but untrue explanations of the IHS
abbreviation.
Only long vowels are marked, except in a few instances where it is desirable
that a vowel should be specially denoted as short. To reduce the number of |
markings to a minimum, only the roots of words are marked, it being assumed
that the quantities of such prefixes as dé-, ré-, and of terminations like -dtus,
-ürius, -iwus are already known. This system also avoids any debatable
assumption of quantity in (e.g.) -ésco, or -ó in third-declension substantives.
Marking of ‘hidden’ quantities has in general been avoided, unless analogy
points plainly to a long syllable, as in scriptum. Here it is a question of
pronunciation rather than of metrical length ;b ut it is unnecessary to follow
implicitly the assertion of ancient grammarians that certain combinations of
consonants (e.g. ns, nf, gn) cause the preceding vowel to be sounded long: it
is enough that these syllables are in any case metrically long. Some exotic
words are naturally doubtful and have been left untouched.
Unusual forms of words are onty occasionally recorded. In the few cases
! Cruciabiliter in PLAvT. Pseud. 950, but cruciabilis not till GErr. 3. 9. 7.
PREFACE v
where doubt might be felt as to what part of speech a word is, a note is added.
Then the meaning of the word is indicated to the best of my ability. If the
word is in general use in the period nothing further is added, especially where
the vocabulary is already covered by the Thesaurus. Sometimes the first
occurrence known to me is stated with the word ‘on.’ added to indicate sub-
sequent use, or alternatively the earliest century or part of a century in which
the word is found is recorded, with ‘on.’ if it continues in use thereafter. This
practice is also to some extent carried out for the different meanings of a
word, when more than one meaning is given. In general, therefore, the more
frequent a word is, the less is said about it. If only the name of one author is
specified, without a citation of a particular passage, this means that J know
it only in that author, of whom it is characteristic. Precise references to
passages are rarely given unless the word is known to me in only three or four
examples altogether. If only one example is given, or only two, the reader is
asked to infer that the word is elsewhere unknown to me in this period.
For the sake of general convenience, I have in giving references adopted
throughout the method of abbreviation used in the Thesaurus. I have
brought other systems found in my, various authorities into conformity
with the T'hesaurus. In the case of a very few titles I have for special reasons
used another system. The use, for example, of the question-begging term
*Itala' to indicate any and every quotation from an Old-Latin, non-Vulgate
form of scripture text is for good reasons generally objected to in this
country. I have instead adopted from Benoist-Goelzer the designation ‘SS.’
(=sacra scriptura) for such passages, and, from English practice, that of
F. C. Burkitt, for example, the abbreviation ‘vc.’ for the Vulgate. Other
deviations from T'hesaurus practice need not be noted here: though it should
be said that here as in other matters, brevity has had to be studied, except
where obscurity would result.
The preparation of a lexicon of this kind, though tedious, is not without its
consolations. Lexicographers can claim to know some of the joys and excite-
ments of all explorers. We, too, have often to hack our way through tangled
growths. These tangled growths are sometimes tralaticious blunders which
have passed undetected, or at least unremoved, through a series of diction-
aries. Texts rapidly produced for the press in the fifteenth or sixteenth
century, often from late, poor, and interpolated, if readily accessible, manu-
scripts, have fallen under the eyes of a lexicographer who has duly recorded
a word which is not what the author wrote ; and this error has been copied by
the later lexicographers. For example, Kroll, Skutsch, and Ziegler in their
edition of Firmicus Maternus' Mathesis, a work of great interest for the
student of the history of morals and of commerce, have cut out whole pas-
sages which appeared in earlier editions but which are not part of the real
Firmicus. Words which belong to these passages and are given in existing
lexica I have therefore ruthlessly excised.
A few examples of ‘ghost’ words which I have detected may be mentioned.
Assistentia (Ps. Ava. quaest. test. 115, Migne 35, p. 2351) is merely an editorial
substitute for the true reading tuitio ;} curtalini in editions of Paulinus of Nola
(epist. 22. 2) is explained, even by the T'hesaurus, as a contracted form of
cohortalini, but it is really two words curta lini ;? infallibiliter is a mistake for
ineffabiliter, transferred from Paucker to Benoist-Goelzer ; solitaneus, cited
1 Archiv xiii (1904), p. 286 f.
? J.T.S. xx (1919), p. 183: my explanation is accepted by J. B. Hofmann in his (3rd)
edition of A. Walde 's Lateinisches etymologisches Wórterbuch Bd.i (Heidelberg, 1938), p. 857.
vi _ PREFACE
from Marcellus Empiricus, is a vox nihili, being a mere error for olitan(e)us;
suauisator, cited from Vespa, had no real existence; subsarcino is a palaeo-
graphical error for subfarcino; neither trinominis nor trinomius is to be found
in the true text of Jerome; winctim should be vunctim ; and so on.
The joy of discovering unrecorded words is perhaps even greater, and of
these there are thousands in this book that will not be found in any of the
ordinary handbooks; and even a number that are not in the T'hesawrus itself.
There is an especial pleasure in finding in the writings of an author words
hitherto cited only from glossaries, or which manuscript copies of any size
begin only in the eighth century of our era. Professor Mayor remarks some-
where that he has found abundant evidence of this nature. As it is impossible
to doubt the truth of his statement and as such evidence is hardly to be.
found in his annotated copies already referred to, it must have been récorded
in other volumes, the present whereabouts of which are unknown to me. That
a large part of his annotations is in private hands, iri spite of the care taken at
the time of the dispersal of his books to assign them to public collections,
seems quite certain. My own discoveries of glossarial words in real texts are
much fewer than his must have been, but I have had a little suecess in this
sphere, e.g. from Rufinus’ (Eusebius’) Ecclesiastical History.
One of the hopes I have cherished in the course of producing this work is
that English and Romanic philologists will be interested to see the earliest
Latin examples of words with an English or Romanic progeny.! From con-
siderations of space I have only very rarely recorded these descendants, even
when they were perfectly well known to me. Many of the words are scientific
terms, and I hope their presence here will encourage the study of, for example,
the old Latin medical writers, which was thought well worth while by such
eminent physicians of yesterday as Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt and Sir
William Osler.
In the effort to base this work on the best obtainable texts, I have availed
myself of several editions which are not yet in type: the ‘vulgate’ translation
of the Shepherd of Hermas, edited by the late C. H. Turner, which it was
agreed before the Second World War should be published in the Prussian
Academy’s series of early Greek Fathers; Cyprian's [T'estimonia] Ad Quiri-
num, partly edited by a number of Oxford scholars, headed by the late
Dr. Sanday, which the Clarendon Press undertook to publish, along with
the Ad Fortunatum of the same author, under the editorship of the present
writer; Jerome's commentary on St. Matthew's Gospel, in preparation for
the Vienna Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, also edited by
myself; and finally, the Cassiodorian revision of Pelagius! Expositions of
thirteen epistles of St. Paul, long ago published under the wrong name of
Primasius, and re-edited by me for the same series.
One more debt has to be acknowledged. Many friends, living and dead, by
their gifts of books and articles have provided me with most of the necessary
tools for my purpose. Editors of learned journals and others have also helped
to furnish me with a private library, which has saved me from the vexations
attending complete dependence on public libraries.
In conclusion, feci quod. potui :
si quid nouisti rectius istis,
candidus imperti: si nil, his utere mecum. A. S.
12 Nov. 1947
! One might have added German. Is there anything more astounding in the history of
language than that German Pferd should come from paraveredus ?