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Hermus vs. Hormuz

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

F. P. Magoun Jr.
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Extract

In The Drinking Academy, or the Cheaters' Holiday (ca. 1620?), Act I, Scene 2, occurs the following phrase: “tho Harmus and Pactolus rowle ther golden wandes into thy cofers.” In a footnote (ed. cit., p. 843), Pactolus (mod. Bagouly) is properly explained as the “Lydian river in which King Midas bathed”; cf. Ovid, Met., xi, 85ff., but the equating of Hermus with Hormuz (Ormuz), an island in the Persian Gulf and famous in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as an emporium of commerce can, however, scarcely be correct. Indeed, the figure in question obviously calls for two rivers, not an island and a river. Rather than the Island of Hormuz and the Pactolus River, are meant the river Hermus (, mod. Sarabat, emptying into the Gulf of Smyrna) and its tributary, the Pactolus. It is difficult to imagine how the Island of Hormuz could roll down golden wands (lege sands?).

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , September 1927 , pp. 670 - 672
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1927

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References

1 Ed. H. E. Rollins, P.M.L.A., XXXIX (1924), 837 ff.

2 Now only a small settlement. See Encycl. Brit., 11th ed., XIII, 694-5.

3 Only in the Punica of Silius Italicus (Hermus, I, 159, and Pactolus, I, 234) do I find the two rivers mentioned in one work; even here they are not mentioned in juxtaposition.

4 See Recension J1, O. Zingerle, Germanistische Abhandlungen IV (1885), 226, ll. n-13, or Recension J2, A. Hilka, Der altfrz. Prosa-Alexanderroman (Halle: Niemeyer, 1920), p. 192, ll. 30-31, or versions of Recension J3 in early printed edd. of the Historia de Preliis (e.g., Strassburg, 1489, in W. W. Skeat, Alexander and Dindimus, E.E.T.S., Ex. Ser. 31, p. 20, where wrongly parallelled to English text belonging to Recension J2.)

5 See Hilka, op. cit., p. xxiv.

6 See W. W. Skeat (quoting Sir F. Madden), The Romance of William of Palerne, E.E.T.S., Ex. Ser., No. 1, p. xxx. See O. Emmerig, ‘“Darius-brief und Tennisball Geschichte,” Englische Studien, XXXIX (1908), 362-401, for the indirect influence of the Alexander story on Henry V, i, 2, 258 ff. ‘Ammonian Jove,’ mentioned by Milton (P.L. IX, 508) as father of Alexander is probably not to be associated with the legend but with some classical source. A. W. Verity, note ad. loc., suggests Plutarch's Life of Alexander; see Pauly-Wissowa, sub ‘Ammon’ for other possibilities.

7 Date not on title page (or in colophon), but supplied in the Brit. Mus. Catalogue of Printed Books and queried.

8 Cf. “Ormus” in A. H. Gilbert, A Geographical Dictionary of Milton (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1919), p. 220. See further interesting notes by A. J. H. Charignon, Le Livre de Marco Polo (Pekin: Nachbaur, 1924), I, 65.