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 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 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
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 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
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 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
ΒΙΒΛΙΟΓΡΑΦΙΑ Α. ΑΙ ΠΗΓΑΙ 1. ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑΙ Ἀγαθίου. Ἰστορίαι. Ἐκδ. R. Keydell. [CFHB 2. Series Berolinensis. Berlin 1967]. Ἀθανασίου Ἀλεξανδρείας. Βίος καὶ πολιτεία τοῦ ὁσίου πατρὸς ἡμῶν Ἀντωνίου. PG 26:835-976b. ———. Λόγος περὶ τῆς ἐνανθρωπήσεως τοῦ Λόγου. Ἐκδ. C. Kannengiesser. [Sources Chrétiennes 199. Paris 1973]. Ἀπολλωνίου Ῥοδίου. Ἀργοναυτικά. Ἐκδ. H. Fraenkel. Oxford 1961. Read more
ΕΠΙΛΟΓΟΣ Μετὰ τὰς Ἀραβικὰς κατακτήσεις ἡ ὀρθόδοξος Χριστιανικὴ μοναστικὴ ζωὴ ἐξηκολούθησε νὰ ὑπάρχῃ ἰδίως εἰς τὴν Ἰουδαϊκὴν ἔρημον [1] καὶ κατὰ τὴν ὑπὸ ἐξέτασιν κρίσιμον περίοδον τὰ μοναστήρια ἐξηκολούθησαν νὰ ὑπάρχουν καὶ νὰ ἀναπτύσσωνται παρὰ τὰς προσκαίρους ὀπισθοδρομήσεις τὰς ὁποίας μερικὰ ἐξ αὐτῶν ἐγνώρισαν λόγῳ τῶν Ἀραβικῶν κατακτήσεων. Ἐπὶ τοῦ Ἰσλάμ, τὰ μοναστήρια ἤνθεσαν καὶ ἀπετέλεσαν φύλακας τόσον τοῦ Χριστιανισμοῦ ὅσον τοῦ… Read more
