Batarum

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Batarum arabice eminentia quedam carnea in vulva quarundam mulierum: que aliquando intantum magnificatur ut sit velut virga virorum, landicam Musio vocat.


Apparatus:

Batarum BRQ egmnopst | Bacarum ACD | Bataram f

arabice ABCDR efgjo | ara. Q | arabice est kps | om. m | arab. est n | est t

eminentia ABCDQR egjkmnt | minencia f | eminencia os

vulva ABCDQR egjmnost | ulua p

quarundam ABCDQR egjmnopt | om. f

ut sit velut ACDQR jkmp | ut sit velud B gos | ut velud e | ut sic f | ut sit veluti nt

virga ABCDQR efgjmnopst | add. s.l. k

virorum ABCDQR egjkmnopst | om. f

landicam Musio vocat ACDGR egost | latini Musio vocant B | om. f | landicam Musico vocat jp | landicam Musio eam vocat k | landicam Misio vocat m | landicam Musio eam vocant n

annotation by second hand in o: vel lendicam

Entry is missing in z


Translation:

Batarum is Arabic for a somewhat fleshy projecting part in the genitals of certain women, which sometimes grows so big that it is like the penis of a man. Mustio calls it landica.


Commentary:

Simon is alluding to Mustio's, 2, 25, ed. Rose (1882: 106): De inmoderata landica, quam Greci yos nymfin appellant "On the over-sized clitoris, which the Greeks call 'sow’s clitoris'", an "affliction" for which ultimately clitoridectomy is suggested.

The Arabic sound ﻈ /ẓāʔ/ is naturally difficult to transcribe for Simon. He writes "dh" or "d" in some words, and there is a case where he uses "th", i.e. the plural of ﻇﻔﺮ /ẓufur/ is ﺍﻇﻔﺎﺭ /ʔaẓfār/ "nail, fingernail; toenail; claw, talon", cf. his entry Athfar.

For Arabic ﺑﻇﺭ /baẓr/ "clitoris (anat.)" (Wehr 1976) the expected transcription would be *badhar, *badar or *bathar and since he would not have distinguished between "th" and "t" in his speech, batar is well within Simon's transcriptional variation range.

The addition of an ending –um remains unexplained.

It is also puzzling that Simon uses the Arabic word to introduce Mustio's passage instead of giving landica its own entry. It might well be the case that Simon as a man of the church shied away from giving a taboo word any prominence, a word possibly considered to be the most obscene in the Latin language, and therefore chose to hide it behind the Arabic entry. Apart from Mustio's work, the word occurs only in the Priapeia and in the occasional graffiti. Observe also that in B, the early Zarotus print, the word is misunderstood as "latini", perhaps deliberately, since that statement makes little sense. Its etymology is unknown.

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