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Piglets again*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2012

David Schaps
David Schaps
Affiliation:
Bar Ilan University
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Extract

In a note to volume cxi of this journal, I observed that the word , although a diminutive, did not at all periods describe a piglet. In the classical period, it seems to have meant a small but not necessarily immature pig; in Hellenistic Delos and in Egypt, a pig fullgrown or nearly so, apparently synonymous with the non-diminutive ; then by the first post-Christian century the term came indeed to mean ‘piglet’, a meaning previously expressed by .

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 116 , November 1996 , pp. 169 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1996

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References

1 ‘When is a Piglet not a Piglet?’, JHS cxi (1991), 208–9.

2 Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae ix 374 d-375 b and xiv 656 f-657 a.

3 Ibid., ix 375 a; cf. Chantraine, P., Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque i (Paris 1968) 261Google Scholar, and Frisk, H., Griechisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch i (Heidelberg 1960–1970) 362.Google Scholar

4 The root of is certainly the Indo-European g“elbh-g”olbh-, which is also the root of the English calf (so correctly Klein, E., A comprehensive etymological dictionary of the English language i [Amsterdam 1966] 223).Google Scholar The semantic field with which this root is associated appears to include other forms of swollen flesh besides the womb. The calf of the leg, pace Klein ibid., is from the same root: cf. Sadovszky, O.J., ‘The reconstruction of IE *pisko and the extension of its semantic sphere’. Journal of Indo-European Studies i (1973) 81–100Google Scholar, for the surprising but well-attested semantic connection between the calf of the leg and fish roe. Suetonius, Calba 3.1 tells us that the Gauls called a very fat person (praepinguis) galba, and this, too, will have come from the same root: so Partridge, E., Origins: a short etymological dictionary of modern English (London 1958) 71Google Scholar, who writes that ‘the basic idea in IE is app(arently) a “swelling of the body’”. This being the case, it needs no special explanation why a pig of either sex should be called a ‘swell’. I owe this note to the learned comments of Dr. Daniel Gershenson and Professor David Weissert; my thanks to both.

5 Nauck, A., Aristophanis Byzantii, Grammatici Alexandrini, Fragmenta (Halle 1848, reprinted Hildesheim 1963)Google Scholar, chapter IV fragment III, 101–2, quoting Eustathius' comment on Hom. Od. xiv 80–2, = Ar. Byz. fr. 169 Slater.

6 See LSJ s.v. III, from Aelian and Galen.

7 Chantraine (n. 3): ‘il désigne une jeune bête, mais apte à la réproduction’, Shipp, G.P., Modern Greek evidence for the ancient Greek vocabulary (Sydney 1979) 209Google Scholar follows him: ‘a young but sexually mature animal.’

8 Ar. Ach. 786.

9 Shipp (n. 7).

10 I do not, offhand, find an English equivalent in the masculine, presumably because boy does not lend itself to the addition of -y but Yiddish offers us the term bocher'l, where the diminutive suffix -l may indicate affection towards or contempt for the adolescent bocher, but does not change his age. English-speaking Jews of Yiddish background use the hybrid word boychik in the same sense. The case of an adolescent girl, whose diminutive denotes an adolescent boy, was mentioned in my previous article.

11 This last term is the one chosen for by C.B. Gulick in the Loeb Athenaeus ix 374 d-375 b; in xiv 656 f-657 a, on the other hand, where Athenaeus is not distinguishing various words for pigs, Gulick contents himself with more pedestrian terms such as sow and pig.

12 PCair. 59346 line 20, cf. lines 24, 28.

13 PCair. 59274, where the are explicitly called by comparison. In the second century of the current era, on the other hand, when the word had come to be a general term for ‘pig’, SB IV 7469 spoke of a (‘fullgrown’)

14 The sanctuary at Delos was purified every month with a , on the other hand, were sacrificed to three gods at the annual Posideia (IG xi 2 and Ins. Dél., passim).

15 One might, of course, take the to be ritually perfect (i.e., unblemished) animals, but the contexts do not suggest any such distinction: PCair. 59310 complains that a swineherd has run away while in debt for a certain number of and another number of PCair. 59769 mentions pigs in three categories: and .

16 PTebt. 883, PCair. 59312 and 59349, PLond. 2186, PSI IV 379 B, line 22.

17 Wallace, R. in Encyclopedia Britannica 11 xxi 595.Google Scholar

18 PLille III 99

19 Clarysse, W., ‘Greek Loan-Words in Demotic’, in Vleeming, S.P., ed., Aspects of Demotic lexicography (Leuven 1987) 22 n. 71.Google Scholar The original editor, F. de Cenival, has since agreed to Professor Clarysse's interpretation (personal correspondence of Professor Clarysse).

20 Allen, W.S., Vox Graeca 3 (Cambridge 1987) 53, 81 n. 51.Google Scholar