Greek rugby

LSJ s.v. ἐπίσκῡρος reads, "ὁ, ball-game ( = ἐπίκοινος III) resembling Rugby football, Hsch., Poll.9.103, Sch.Pl.Tht.146a. II. governor, Call.Fr. 231, cf. Hsch.".

P.G.W. Glare in 'Liddell-Scott-Jones: Then and Now', Hyperboreus 3.2 (1997): 205-217, at 210, noted this entry and advised 'At the same time it is wise not to be too up-to-date. Under ἐπίσκυρος we have "a game resembly Rugby Football". This is no doubt more vivid than, say, "a ball game played between two sides", but it is dangerous to compare ancient with modern games, especially when there is, as is the case here, very little evidence. I can only say that, in so far as ancient sport showed a tendency to violence, the definition is more apt today than when Stuart Jones drafted it. Similarly ἀωιλιασταί are described as "navvies", a word with rich connotations in English, but quite [italics mine] unsuitable for the Greek context.'.

It is worth remembering that Glare was a Rugby player himself. Also, earlier in the article, indeed on the same page, he remarked on the ambiguity of English 'quite'. ἀωιλιασταί is a new entry in the 1968 Supplement (p. 29) for 'P.Cair.Zen.745.58 (iii BC)'. The same papyrus, which was published in 1931, is also cited in the revised entry for ἀωίλιον (line 61). In the Revised Supplement of 1996, these men were 'excavators'.

καπνιστήριο(ν): a Hellenistic, Byzantine, and Modern repeat neologism ?

The noun refers to a vapour bath or similar in a late Hellenistic inscription from Priene (other (conjectured) attestations), to a censer in the de Ceremoniis of Constantinus Porphyrogenitus (pp. 554-555), and, nowadays, to a smoking room (as a calque on French fumoir, salon á fumer).

Notes on Latin inscriptions: the Praenestine Fibula

Bibliotheca Augustana has a drawing, transcription, and classicised text.

A hot-water bottle at Oxyrhynchus

LSJ s.v. φακός II. 
'anything shaped like lentils: 1. hot-water bottle, POxy.1088.46 (i A. D.); φ. ὀστράκινος Hp.Nat.Mul.34; πυρίη φακῶν τῶν κεραμήων Aret.CA2.5; φ. τοῦ ἐλαίου oil-flask, LXX 1 Ki.10.1; τοῦ ὕδατος ib.26.11.'

Sure enough, such a hot-water bottle does feature in P.Oxy. VIII 1088, which describes various remedies. The translation of the ed.pr. of the relevant section (col. ii, lines 38-47) is as follows:

'For quartan fever : juice of silphium 1 ob., myrrh. 1 ob.,
Another dose: hemlock 3 dr., henbane 3 dr. (ὑοσκυάμο(υ) (δραχμαὶ) γ), opium 2dr. (ὀπίου (δραχμαὶ) β), castor 1 dr. (καστορήου (δραχμὴ) α), black hellebore 1 dr.; 
pound and work them up separately with water and pastilles the size of an Egyptian bean, then dry in the shade and give them to the patient to drink fasting (νήστηι), rubbing them in half a cotyle of raisin wine, having previously given him a bath two hours before taking; apply a warm bottle to the feet, and cover him with blankets (προλούσας πρὸ τῆς λήμψεω(ς) ὁρῶν (= ὡρῶν) β καὶ φακὸν πρὸς τοὺς πόδας προτιθείς, καὶ σκεπάζειν ἱματίοις).'

43 'The Egyptian bean was a common measure of magnitude;...'.
44 'νήστηι : cf. Moeris... νῆστις Ἀττικοί, νήστης Ἕλληνες....'
46 φακόν : Hp. Περὶ γυν. φύσ. is cited, as in LSJ,... καὶ τοῖς ὀστρακίνοις τὸ ὕδωρ ἐγχέων ξεστόν. 'They were so called on account of their shape.'

A *stray* gerundive in the wild

The ancients had fill-in-the-blanks forms much as we do. An inscription from Algeria (AE 1931: no. 112) seems to reflect misuse of a manual for writing epitaphs:

hic corpus iacet pueri nominandi
'here lies the body of {boy to be named here}

It is also a reminder of that Eagles' song:
'Well, the towns lay out across the dusty plains
Like graveyards filled with tombstones, waitin' for the names'.

A picture speaks a thousand words

To my knowledge, there is only one image in Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v. ἄρβηλος II. The illustration clarifies the nature of a geometric figure.


The problem is, as the 1968 Supplement noted, that this illustration is upside down.
The notes from CR 56 pages 75[-76] (D'Arcy W. Thompson) and 116 (J. D. Beazley) reflect a gentler age in which a Classical scholar could consult both a bootmaker and a saddler on the same London street and in which shoemakers were named in notes about realia.

Finally, the Revised Supplement of 1996 is silent about the orientation of the diagram in II, leaving us to infer that Liddell-Scott-Jones had it right to begin with.