Chapter 3. Próbaton and the Homeric Economy Abstract It has been maintained that the term próbaton, created by the Greeks, meant small animals, especially the “sheep,” since in a mixed flock the sheep tend to walk in front (pro-baínein). It will be shown that this thesis is untenable; 1) próbaton, to begin with, designated the large as well as the small animals. 2) the Greeks had no mixed flocks. 3)… Read more
Chapter 4. Livestock and Money: pecu and pecunia Abstract For all comparative philologists, Indo-European *peku means “live-stock” or, in a narrow sense, “sheep.” The meaning of “wealth” (e.g. Lat. pecūnia) is consequently regarded as secondary and this is explained as the result of a semantic extension of the term which originally referred to the main type of wealth, i.e. live-stock. A study of *peku and its derivatives in the three… Read more
Section 2: Giving and Taking Chapter 5. Gift and Exchange Abstract Greek has five words that are commonly translated uniformly by “gift.” A careful examination of their use shows that they do in fact correspond to as many different ways of envisaging a gift—from the purely verbal notion of “giving” to “a contractual prestation imposed by the terms of a pact, an alliance, a friendship, or a ‘guest-host’ relationship.” The… Read more
Chapter 6. Giving, Taking, and Receiving Abstract 1) Hittite, which attaches to the root *dō– the sense of “to take,” suggests that in Indo-European the notions “to give” and “to take” converged, as it were, in gesture (cf. English to take to). 2) Contrary to the traditional etymologies which find no difficulty in bringing together Lat. emo and Got. niman (Germ. nehmen), but firmly separate niman from Gr. némō, justifying… Read more
Chapter 7. Hospitality Abstract In Latin “guest” is called hostis and hospes < *hosti-pet-. What is the meaning of these elements? What is the meaning of the compound? 1) –pet-, which also appears in the forms pot-, Lat. potis (Gr. pótis, despótēs, Skr. patiḥ), and –pt– (Lat. –pte, i–pse?) originally meant personal identity. In the family group (dem-) it is the master who is eminently “himself” (ipsissimus, in Plautus, means… Read more
Chapter 8. Personal Loyalty Abstract For Osthoff, Eiche und Treue (1901), the group of Germ. treu is related to the Indo-European name for “oak,” Gr. drûs: to be loyal means to stand as firm as an oak. It will be shown that if the relationship really exists, the affiliation is the reverse: the common root signifies “to be firm” and the adjective designates “tree,” literally “what is resistant, the solid… Read more
Section 3: Purchase Chapter 9. Two Ways of Buying Abstract Were the roots *wes– and kwrī-, which have provided the verbs for “to buy,” synonymous in Indo-European? Greek, where these two roots coexist and function in suppletion, enables us to determine the first as the designation of transaction and the second as that of payment. Text To designate the “purchase,” the agreement of several languages provides us with a well-defined… Read more
Chapter 10. Purchase and Redemption Abstract Indo-European had words for “to be worth” and “value.” But a study of the Homeric usage of alphánō ‘to bring in, yield, fetch’ makes it clear that alphḗ designated originally the exchange value of a man put up for sale. Skt. arhat ‘a man of particular merit’ brings confirmation of this ancient sense. With the Germans, the custom of selling a man who had… Read more
Chapter 11. An Occupation without a Name: Commerce Abstract The comparison of Indo-European languages furnishes no common designation for commerce as a specific activity, as distinguished from buying and selling. The particular terms which appeared in different places are usually recognizable as borrowings (Lat. caupo, Gr. kápēlos), or recent creations (Gr. émporos). The Latin negōtium, itself a recent word, has a peculiar history: 1) A calque on Gr. a–skholía, neg–ōtium… Read more
Section 4: Economic Obligations Chapter 12. Accountancy and Valuation Abstract Latin duco and Greek hēgéomai have the same senses; the literal sense “lead, command” and the figurative sense “believe, judge, estimate.” But we must be careful not to deduce from this that there were parallel lines of development in both cases, from the literal to the figurative sense. Whereas with Greek hēgéomai ‘command’ there was a direct passage from… Read more
