Derivation in the wild, or 'because that's the name of the place!'

Sometimes, authors explain after whom or what a place or people was named and thus illustrate derivation to form an adjective, with various suffixes, from an noun. More examples to follow... ?

Herodotus, I 7.3
Οἱ δὲ πρότερον Ἄγρωνος βασιλεύσαντες ταύτης τῆς χώρης ἦσαν ἀπόγονοι Λυδοῦ τοῦ Ἄτυος, ἀπ’ ὅτεο ὁ δῆμος Λύδιος ἐκλήθη ὁ πᾶς οὗτος, πρότερον Μηίων καλεόμενος.
 
Mark the Deacon, Life of Porphyrius, 64:
Ἦσαν δὲ ἐν τῇ πόλει ναοὶ εἰδώλων δημόσιοι ὀκτώ, τοῦ τε Ἡλίου καὶ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης καὶ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ τῆς Κόρης καὶ τῆς Ἑκάτης καὶ τὸ λεγόμενον Ἡρωεῖον καὶ τῆς Τύχης τῆς πόλεως, ὃ ἐκάλουν Τυχαῖον, καὶ τὸ Μαρνεῖον, ὃ ἔλεγον εἶναι τοῦ Κρηταγενοῦς Διός, ὃ ἐνόμιζον εἶναι ἐνδοξότερον πάντων τῶν ἱερῶν τῶν ἁπανταχοῦ.

ibid., 91:
Ὁ δὲ μακάριος ἐποίησεν πάντας ἀναθεματίσαι τὸν Μάνην τὸν ἀρχηγὸν τῆς αὐτῶν αἱρέσεως, ἐξ οὗ καὶ Μανιχαῖοι ἐκλήθησαν, καὶ κατηχήσας αὐτοὺς δεόντως ἐπὶ πλείστας ἡμέρας προσήγαγεν τῇ ἁγίᾳ καθολικῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ.

ibid., 92:
Μετὰ δὲ πενταετῆ χρόνον ἐτελειώθη τὸ ἔργον τῆς ἁγίας ἐκκλησίας τῆς μεγάλης, ἐκλήθη δὲ Εὐδοξιανὴ ἐκ τοῦ ὀνόματος τῆς θεοφιλεστάτης Εὐδοξίας τῆς βασιλίδος.

'That's all, folks!'

One lecturer used to end each instalment of his lectures on Modern Greek with a simple ἀυτά!

There follow some comparanda with a different pronoun-adjective:
P.Oxy. I 119. 14-15 (2nd-3rd century CE):
ἂμ μὴ πέμψῃς οὐ μὴ φά|γω, οὐ μὴ πείνω· ταῦτα.
'If you do not send it, I won't eat, I won't drink! So there!

GVI 1959: (Rome: late 2nd-mid 3rd century CE) 
οὐκ ἤμην, γενόμην·| ἤμην, οὐκ εἰμί· τοσαῦτα·
'I was not; I was born; I was. I am not. That's yet lot!' (Or, 'That's all, folks!').

Mark the Deacon, Life of Porphyrius, 84 (at the end of the account of the construction of a church on the site of a recently destroyed temple):
καὶ ταῦτα μὲν περὶ τούτων.
'That's enough about that.'.

Compounds in σοφο-

The name Σοφοκλέης/Σοφοκλῆς is very family, but there are surprisingly few compounds with σοφο- as a first member (contrast φιλό-σοφος, etc.). LSJ knows σοφο-τέχηνης from an inscription of 149 AD, σοφό-νους as a nonce-word in Lucian (Colvin 2007: 270-271, no. 92),  and cites the curious σοφιβόλος from P.Oxy. XVI 1873 (actually a ghostword: ἀ<μ>φιβόλον is now read instead of σοφιβῶλον), but reports no others.


That inscription ends with a Roman date (by consuls and with reference to the Ides of No(v)ember) in a dative (!) absolute: Ὀρφίτῳ καὶ Σοσ|σίῳ Πρείσκῳ ὑπάτοις, εἴδοις Νοεμβρίαις. Jannaris (1897: 499-500) cites several examples, but not this one.

The Revised Supplement, p. 279, reports σοφο-διδάσκαλος from an inscription from Sardis.

E.A. Sophocles, pp. 1001-1002, reports σοφό-δωρος (and a feminine counterpart in -δοτις) and σοφο-ποιός with its derivatives, all from Pseudo-Dionysios.


The onomastic data confirms the rarity of σοφο- compounds:

[ Note that Λαϝόσοϝος is falsely returned (see CEG I 444). ]

All of this serves to underline that the Teacher of Rhetoric's suggestion that one should sprinkle in words like σοφόνους is comical. There too χειρί-σοφος is recommended, which appears as a name 4x. Colvin translates 'cheirosophic'.

Privies at Pergamon

The noun ἀφεδρών 'privy' was only known from a passage shared by the Mark and Matthew until a long inscription (OGIS 483: a crude index of 'some' 'relevant' entries in LSJ) from Pergamon was published at the start of the twentieth century.

Arabic in Greek

The title amīr al-muʾminīn is found as a single noun in -ης in various forms in Byzantine texts (ἀμερμουμνῆς), including one that appears to reflect the article in the middle of the Arabic noun phrase: ἀμεραμνουνῆς.

Alchemy (or Chemistry after the removal of the article) provides an example of a Greek word (χυμ(ε)ία/χημεία, perhaps itself from Coptic) making its way into Arabic and thenceforth.

Addresses and delivery

I am reliably informed that the street called 'Straight' in Damascus is/was not so straight.

The more detailed delivery instructions in the papyri are:
P.Oxy. XIV 1678 (image) and 1773, XXXIV 2719 ('Give a shout...'), and XLI 2980.
These references are from P.J. Parsons, City of the Sharp-nosed Fish - Greek Lives in Roman Egypt. (London: Orion Publishing Group, 2007), 125-126 and 239nn. 23 and 24.

Latin words in Greek

centurio gives κεντορίων (at Philae, 32 BC), κεντυρίων (NT., when not ἑκατοντάρχης: κεντυρι- is relatively widespread in epigraphy: e.g., SB V 8449 39/40 AD), and κεντουρίων in John the Lydian, de magistratibus (6th. c. AD; but cf. the related adjective in Egypt or Nubia in the 1st ? c. AD: SB V 5818).

In yet later Greek, illustris gives ἰλλουστρία (illustr(i)a) and ἰλλοῦστρος (Rev.Supp. s.v. ἴλλυστρος).

Notes on inscriptions: Asianism in Commagene OGI 383

This long inscription of the Res-gestae type is now known as ISyr I 1. L.D. Reynolds and N.G. Wilson mention this text briefly in Scribes and Scholars and give some bibliography (OUP, 1991^3): 200-1 and 297.

A text with vocabulary can be found in Allen Wikgren (ed.), with the collaboration of Ernest Cadman Colwell and Ralph Marcus, Hellenistic Greek Texts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947) 137-140.

The vocabularly (pp. 211-271) is for the whole volume (not a running vocabulary for this inscription); a glossary proper names (pp. 271-275).

There is a translation, commentary, and bibliography in F.W. Danker, Benefactor: an epigraphic study of a Graeco-Roman and New Testament semantic field (1982): 236-248 (no. 41).

Eduard Norden described its style as "bacchantic dithyrambic prose".

A search for Nemrud Dagh in LSJ returns more than one either for Nimrud Dagh or for OGI 383.

The British Museum has a statement about one of the reduced scale versions of one of the reliefs that constitutes this monument. It notes the damage that resulted from subsequent re-use. P.M. Fraser discussed this stone in relation to OGI 404 in ABSA 47 (1952) 96-101.

To the sage, Greece is everywhere

Philostratos, Life of Apollonios of Tyana, I 35.2. Of course, if this is your car, Greece is wherever you drive.
 

Pronouns in post-Classical Greek

LSJ s.v. σύ notes 'in late Gr. σέν, Anatolian Studies p.76', which is SEG VI 370 (line 23), a fourth-century AD epitaph.

This inscription was discussed by W.M. Calder in 'The epigraphy of the Anatolian heresies' (pp. 59-91, with the delightfully quaint Pl. VII) in Anatolian Studies presented to Sir W. M. Ramsay, Manchester 1923, edd. W.H. Buckler and W.M. Calder.

See also GVI 1556 and MAMA VII 556 and X 77

Also of interest is the discord of a participle in the genitive with a noun in the dative (lines 4-5).

The Gallus Trilingual

The monument displays the text in (from top to bottom and in decreasing 'font' size) in hieroglyphics, then Latin, and then Greek.

The most recent (?) edition of the text has a BMCR review.

More late Christian lexical items in LSJ

Further to στεφανοσταύριον, there is οἰκονόμισσα, cited from a fifth-century inscription
and another (ep.pr. Sterrett, WE 216 n.345 [?PASCSA 3 1884-5] = MAMA VIII 399) that is not dated explicitly (Roman imperial).

The name Doxa goes way back.

There is a third instance, which may be second-century, and a fourth.

Also, the passive of φιλοκαλέω is reported (s.v. 5) from a sixth-century inscription.

Claudius to the Alexandrians: Hello.

P.Lond. VI 1912 (text and trannie that reflects its 'orthography')

Jews with Greek names

Or: 'Just because my name's Patrick, it doesn't mean I'm Irish'.

In Acts 6:5, we meet seven individuals, who were nominated to serve the Christian community in Jerusalem in order to resolve a quarrel between the Ἑλληνισταί and the  Ἑβραῖοι about the unequal distribution of food to their widows:

...Στέφανον, ἄνδρα πλήρης πίστεως καὶ πνεύματος ἁγίου, καὶ Φίλιππον καὶ Πρόχορον καὶ Νικάνορα καὶ Τίμωνα καὶ Παρμενᾶν καὶ Νικόλαον προσήλυτον Ἀντιοχέα,...

All have Greek names. Without the context, we could not know that these men were Jews, Christians, or, in the case of the last, proselytes. We would also be wrong to conclude that there were Greeks. 

BDAG s.v. Τίμων notes 'one of the seven persons appointed to release the apostles from papyrus-work relating to aid for widows'. The entries for these seven men show no consistency.

Prochorus is not attested earlier, according to BDAG.

Note also: Philip and Andrew (Ev.Jo. 12), Alexander - a member of the high priestly family (Act.Ap. 4:6), and Σίμων (9x in NT, of various Jews, a leper, a Pharisee, a Samaritan (?) magician) for Συμεών (Act.Ap.15:14, 2 Ep.Pet.1:1).

In other words, a person of any ethnicity or religion may lie/hide behind a Greek (or a widespread 'Patrick' type) name.

The Hippolytos Mosaic

The character's of the Hippolytos mythos (lower half) are depicted on this mosaic located at Madaba in Jordan. Aphrodite and Adonis appear in the top right-hand corner.


The Franciscan Archaeological Institute has further discussion, and another view is available.