Rafis

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Rafis grece acus inde rafidothichi acuarium ferrum.


Apparatus:

C has Rasis {printing error}

rafidothichi AC | rafidotichi B | raffidotichi e | reafidochiki f

acuarium AC | acuariuʒ e | acrarium f | aziariũ B


Translation:

Rafis is Greek for Latin acus {"needle"}, and derived from it is rafidothichi, which is in Latin acuarium ferrum {"needle-box"}.

{Latin ferrum can mean "any implement/ object made of iron", and acuarius means "concerning needles".}


Commentary:

Greek ῥαφίς /rhaphís/ means "needle", and /rhaphidothḗkē/ ῥαφιδοθήκη is a compound of ῥαφιδο- {"needle"} + θήκη /thḗkē/ {"case, chest"}.

Rafido-thichi shows the itacist Greek pronunciation of θήκη /thḗkē/ at that time, i.e. with the sound change η > ι {/ē/ > /i/}.

Apart from this mention, /rhaphidothḗkē/ ῥαφιδοθήκη is only attested once, in a Greek-Latin glossary commonly attributed to Ps. Cyril. The earliest copy of this text dates to the 8th century. For an edition of the text see this link.

The ending of the lemma is not transmitted unanimously. The small but important difference lies in -ci- versus -cu- in the penultimate word. According to du Cange's dictionary, both acuarium [[1]] and aciarium [[2]] are attested. Since acuarium is transmitted in both main groups of the stemma (these are AC and B e), this reading was kept in the main text.

The glossary mentioned above equates /rhaphidothḗkē/ ῥαφιδοθήκη with aciarium. The exact relationship between the clavis and the glossary yet remains to be determined. A preliminary survey yielded several coinciding lemmata, but since these concerned common words, they do not prove that Simon used a copy of the glossary. The only strong evidence is the entry Elmigx which also contains a word that is not transmitted elsewhere.

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