The Muses Buy a Cow

Author(s): M. L. West
Source: The Classical Review, New Series, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Jun., 1964), pp. 141-142
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/709110
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 THE CLASSICAL
were set; notches, grooves, or projections to
afford a grip for the fingers. In the first
volume of this journal (C.R. i [I887], 244)
R. C. Seaton summarized the discussion and
reserved judgement. In the ensuing seventy-
five years little has been added except
opinion. The alternative interpretations, it
seems, we have with us always.x Yet two of
the alternatives are plausible only as explana-
tiones di~Jiciliores.For almost without ex-
ception feathers are attached to arrows not
by inserting them into the shaft but by
gluing or binding with sinew.2 And the
knobbed or roughened arrows associated
with the unsophisticated 'primary loose' are
but rarely attested for the ancient Near
East.3
rIv4&ies then should naturally be inter-
preted as 'nock'. The plural is an obstacle; it
is hardly the normal Homeric use of plural
for a composite singular (despite Macan's
plea, on Herod., loc. cit., that 'you would
make the notch with two cuts'). There is one
ingenious possibility which, strangely, has
not been suggested, even by advocates of
a Never-Never Land in which Odysseus
shoots a Scythian arrow-head from a bow of
unalloyed goat's horn through the suspension
rings of a row of miniature votive axes set up
in a split-level megaron; those who are
interested may consult Willard E. Bishop,
Journal of the Society of Archer-Antiquaries, i
(I958), 35; cf. ii (i959), 4-
Another solution was proposed diffidently
by Walter Leaf, Iliad2, i. 585: two nocks at
right angles. He made few converts, among
them Cunliffe (Lexiconof the HomericDialect).
THE MUSES
THE story of Archilochus' encounter with the
Muses, told in the Parian inscription pub-
lished by N. M. Kondoleon in I955,5 con-
tains a small problem which the author of
I Feather-slots, L. W. Hunter on Aen.
Tact. 3I. 26 (Oxford, I927); J. E. Powell,
Lexiconto Herodotus(Cambridge, 1938), s.v.;
H. J. Rose on Nonn. xv. 332 (Loeb Classical
Library, I940); Ph.-E. Legrand on Herod.
loc. cit. (Bude text, I953); notches for grip- Hittite relief from Zincirli published by
ping, Otto Lippelt, Griech. Leichtbewaffneten F. von Luschan, Festschr.f. Otto Benndorf
(diss. Jena, I9Io), p. I7; Jan van Leeuwen
on II. loc. cit. (Leyden, I912); H. L.
Lorimer, Homerand the Monuments(London,
1950), pp. 293 f., 302; alternatives presented, pp. I8, I50.
L.S.3'.9, s.v.; M. M. Gillies on Apoll. loc.
cit. (Cambridge, I928); W. B. Stanford on
Od. loc. cit. (2nd ed., London, I958).
REVIEW I4I
In refutation Miss Lorimer asserted (Homer
and the Monuments,p. 293) that a second nock
would not only be wholly superfluous, but
would also wantonly increase the shaft's
tendency to split.
Modern technocracy may still learn some-
thing about fietching from bygone toxo-
philic civilizations. A relevant passage in
Ascham's Toxophilus seems to have been
neglected:
'The nocke of the shafte is dyuersly made,
for some be ... wyth one nocke, some wyth
a double nocke, wherof euery one hathe hys
propertye .... Double nockyng is vsed for
double suerty of the shaft.' (Ed. W. Aldis.
Wright, pp. 86 f.)
Additional testimony is provided by an
anonymous Moroccan master archer who
compiled a handbook on archery in Arabic
about 1500:
'Some archers were in the habit of making
for their arrows two nocks, one crossing the
other. This enabled them to insure speed in
nocking and shooting.'
And again:
'In every arrow you may have two nocks
intersecting each other crosswise at right
angles. This makes it easier to nock an arrow
with great speed and without looking at the
nock or string.'4
It follows that Leaf's explanation of the
plural yAvckliescannot so lightly be discarded.
WALLACE
MCLEOD
VictoriaCollege, Toronto
BUY A COW
a valuable recent discussion has not suc-
ceeded in solving.6
Meyova, yap )ipXloxov ~ri v~t6Epov 6VTa,
rTET?pcO0vra61O ,oV ,ra,pos T~)taEKXeovS dls
2 Ancient arrows, F. E. Brown, in Dura-
Europos,Prelim. Rep. vi (New Haven, I936),
453-5; aboriginal arrows of America and
northern Asia, S. L. Rogers, American
N.S. xlii (1940), 262-4.
Anthropologist,
3 Not totally unattested; e.g. the neo-
(Vienna, I898), pp. 189 ff.
4 ArabArchery,tr. and ed. by Nabih Amin
Faris and R. P. Elmer (Princeton, I945),
s lpx. 'Eelx. I952, pp. 32 ff.
6 A. Kambylis, 'Zur "Dichterweihe" des
Archilochos', Hermes,xci (1963), I29-50.
142 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW
dypov els ,ov 8$J,~ov 6S KaXerra~ f
Aeq veS, country women going to market from the
c3are Flovv Karayaye?v els irpaav, ivaaarda fields where they lived and worked. The
,rpwirepov rs VVKtros, ae)tjvrs haLirolvarTs, impression must have been confirmed when
[a]yeri,v rv /%ovv ls ,ro;,tv Ct) 8' ;yEvero Kara they offered to buy his cow; it was only
rov -xrovT 6sg KaX7a& Aiorra[es, 8~oat yvvarKas when they vanished, taking the cow with
[l]a6lv aapoaS* vo,fjiaavra *' aTro T@V spycuv them and leaving a lyre at his feet in ex-
adrrevao avraS els wrodAvrrpoaeAOov'a aKtcrrretv. change, that he began to wonder. The local
There can be no doubt that dvaarravra sense of epya is not confined to early poetry;
rrpCw~'epovr's vvKtros means 'getting up
cf. Hdt. i. 36. I Ta 7'~v Mvaeiv epya 3ta-
rather early in the night', that is, some little q~eipeaKe,Xen. Cyn. 4. 9, 5. I2, I5, 34, al.,
time before dawn. The alternative interpre- Theophr. Sign. 3. 9 dVKOS Sravrrposra epya
tations considered by W. Peek, Philologus, op,uz . . . ?Xel~fvaarjLualveiev0vs, P. Petr. 2.
xcix (I955), I8, and Kambylis, I37 ff., make 4, fr. 3. 5 (iii B.C.) dAovroJv*t3 els Ta pya,
nonsense of the story. The problem is, why fr. 6. 2 Kara/advros Jiov&ArT ep7ya,P. Baden
should Archilochus, meeting women on the 40. 5 (ii A.D.) esl Aoyov7rpoXpeias6ep/gao'zv
road in the early morning, suppose them to ~ravrcwv ;pywv.
be going home from work? M. L. WEST
He did not. He supposed them to be UniversityCollege, Oxford

A NOTE ON BOXING-GLOVES

carpenta cum mimis et omni genere hi- In Hermathena,xiv (1907), 3, however,

strionum, pugiles flacculis, non ueritate pugil- Robinson Ellis conjectured flocculis. 'More
lantes. probably it is a substantive, and either a cor-
(Trebellius Pollio, Gall. 8. 3.) ruption or a mis-spelling offlocculis, dim. of
flacculis P: flosculis Z: sacculis vulgo: floccus.Flocks or shreds of wool or other soft
flocculis Ellis. materials would naturally be used to deaden
the force of the blows dealt in a sham boxing-
Flacculus(-um?),apparently meaning a type bout.' Frere rejects this, but neither he nor,
of boxing-glove, is not a word attested else- it would appear, Ellis himself was aware of
where, and early editors of the Historia a passage in Philostratus3 in which gcooia
Augustaread sacculis; but although the latter is used of fleece gauntlets of the type en-
word might be used of punch-bags filled with visaged by Ellis. The boxer Plutarch has
sand or meal (Gk. Kf3pVKOS,aaKraS; Lat. prayed to Achelous Enagonius for help when
follis,-iculus), it is scarcely conceivable that he is almost exhausted after a long contest.
the Roman populace was entertained on the Then
veqaXf es rO ard$tov KarappryvvraiKal
occasion of Gallienus' triumph by such a
~?&)V o Ilovrapxos ~aTracre ToV ~$aros, o
spectacle. This must have been a contest dveiXr(eft,ardrepi rot? TrrfXai KwoSra. The
between boxers, even if they did not fight 'in floruit of Philostratus is not long before the
earnest'. The reading of P was defended by reign of Gallienus, and flocculismay after all
Salmasius1 and more recently by H. Frere,2 be right, a diminutive offloccus, parallel to
who interprets flaccuIisas a translation of the
gK3as-Kg?tov.4 These boxers were, in our
l!.dvreS txaXaKo~repo~ of Greek boxing, which equivalent idiom, using 'kid gloves'.5
were superseded by the more brutal lladvres
o:ef? (Lat. caestus)in the contests normally Universityof Edinburgh E. K. BORTHWICK
fought in the Roman arena.

I pilas istas vel pugillos qui in morempilae
laxae et flaccidae circum ponebanturbracchiis
pugillantiumfiacculasa Trebelliovocatasarbitror,
si pilas intelligamus,aut fiacculossi pugillos.
2 Melanges Ernout,p. I 55. Frere compares
auriflaccus'cauliflower-eared', of C.G.L. iii.
330. 46, a gloss on d)roKXa3ias (cf. coroO)aasa).
The analogy is of course only approximate,
asflaccusin one case refers to the condition of
the ears after being struck, the other to the
actual composition of the boxing-glove.
3 Her. 6 (ii. I47. 4 Kayser).
4 The neglect of the Philostratus passage
may be due to its omission in Jiithner's basic
study Oberantike Turngerathe,where (p. 84)
he compares the flacculiof Treb. Poll. to the
drrlaiapa of Plut. Mor. 825e (but see Frere,
op. cit., p. 15I). Fleece gauntlets of some
sort are implied in the boxing match in
Statius, Theb. vi. 786 (summo maculas in
uellereuidit).
5 In modern times also gloves used for
sparring (apparently referred to in the pro-
fession as 'pillows') are much heavier and
more thickly padded than those used in the
ring.