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A Correction in Hesychius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

Some years ago I contributed to the Νέα Ήμέρα, then a flourishing Greek weekly journal in Trieste, a treatise on Greek Cynegetics. Pressing occupations compelled me to stop short at the chapter on Dogs—their Greek names and various breeds. Among the considerable material collected on this subject there occurred the following definition from Hesychius: Φόλυες· κύνες οἳ πυρροὶ ὄντες μέλανα στόματα εἵχον. Now dogs whose mouths could be said to be black were unknown until the so-called chows were quite recently introduced into the West from China. Evidently we have here some copyist's error, such as abound in this invaluable vocabulary, so highly prized by Coray. It appeared to me that the problem might be solved by a close inquiry into the use and meaning of the word φόλυς.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1926

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References

1 He repeatedly and lovingly refers to ‘Hesychius meus,’ his own copy, now with the rest of his books in the public library of Chios, the margins black with his manuscript emendations. These were collected and published in Athens in 1889. To the passage in question he does not refer at all.

2 Λεπίς is, properly speaking, the fish scale.

3 The word in all its forms often occurs with a double λλ, but not correctly so.

4 etc., Heliod. Aeth. ix, 15.

5 Λεπιδωτός, the scaled covering of reptiles more especially.