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Preface
Chapter 2. A Lexical Opposition in Need of Revision: sūs and porcus Abstract It is usually held that: 1) IE *porko– (Latin porcus) denotes the domestic pig as opposed to the wild animal, *sū– (Lat. sūs); 2) The dialect distribution of *porko– leads to the conclusion that only the European tribes practiced pig-breeding. However, a careful examination shows 1) that in all languages, and particularly in Latin, where the opposition… Read more
Abbreviations
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
Book I: Economy
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 1: Livestock and Wealth
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 1. Male and Sire
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 2. A Lexical Opposition in Need of Revision: sūs and porcus
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 3. Próbaton and the Homeric Economy
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
Chapter 4. Livestock and Money: pecu and pecunia
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
Section 2: Giving and Taking
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