Thursday, October 1, 2015
What's in a name?
My observation this week is purely on grammatical level, although with all the military terms I've been encountering I feel like I am back in Caesar! In the Praefatio, we have a significant number of Biblical names being encountered and I noticed that while some very nicely fit into the latin case structure (i.e. Sarra), others are left, as they usually are in Greek, undeclined and still others, like Sodom, have the endings tacked onto them. However, the biblical figure Lot, appears as Loth in the text and as far as I could find, this name is simply not an alternate spelling or ending. As his name here appears in the accusative, I was wondering whether Prudentius may have added the h based off of the p the Hebrew phonetics or perhaps based off early Latin Christian literature. Does any one else know of any instances of Lot appearing as "Loth" in late antique literature or earlier literature or is this unique to Prudentius?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Sam has the Budé edition of the Psychomachia; I lost mine somehow. Sam, could you see if there is any comment on the spelling/declension of Loth in other authors? I know that Jerome in his Latin Vulgate translation uses Loth without declining it, and scholars agree that the Prude (as I call him, after all the time I have spent with him), was using Jerome's translation. Jerome actually knew Hebrew, so he was using the Greek as well as the Hebrew versions when he was making his translation. Which is a stunning work in itself-- he was insane, but brilliant.
ReplyDelete