Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/19

 10 s. XL JAN. 2, 1909.J NOTES AND QUERIES.

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by reason of its coating of tin), and hence afnrpa (n. pi.), substantively, means money generally : e\ei TroAAo, aorrpa=he is rich. It was therefore not a far cry to associate ao-Trpa -with asperi nummi. But, as Coray has shown, when the Romans spoke of these, they referred, not to tin-coated or silver coins, but to the newly minted, which of course are crisp, and rougher to the touch than such as have been in circulation for some time. With his characteristic acumen, therefore, Coray traced acnrpos to ao-jriAos ^spotless, immaculate), and by syncope ao-7rAos, the change of A into p being very common in later Greek. So much for the etymology.

With regard to the geographical point, " Ao-Trpr; ^aAacrcra is an exact rendering of Ak Denghiz, the Turkish designation (which occurs also as Bahri-Eliaz and Adalar-Arassi) of that part of the Mediterranean which, lying outside the Dardanelles, and between the shores of Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, is studded with the innumerable Greek islands, those of the ^gaean being included. It was evidently so named by the Turks in contradistinction to the sea which is situated on the other side of the narrows, and which they called the Black Sea (Kara Denghiz also Bahri-Eswed), owing to its sudden and violent storms, and principally, I should say, to the dense fogs which pervade it. From the Turks, the Russians also have so christened it, Czarne More ; and among our Greek mariners it is usually known as M.avpr) 0aAao-o-o. But the ancient appella- tion Eveivos Ilovros (or Euetvov IltAayos, Mare Euxenum) is still in use in our literary style. Strabo (vii. pp. 298, 300 who uses also the designation IleAayos novTiKoV, i. p. 21, &c.), citing Apollodorus and other earlier authors, states that it was originally known as *Aevos, " the inhospitable," owing to its dangerous navigation, and to the barbarous and cannibal habits of the surrounding tribes ; but that after Greek colonies were established and commerce flourished, it was renamed the " hospitable sea." So says also the Scholiast of Apol- lonius Rhodius (ii. 550). Schynanus (734) terms it "A^evos. Herodotus, however, who speaks at length of the Euxine, makes no allusion to such later modification of its name ; while Pindar refers to it both as "A^eifos ('Pyth,' iv. 203) and as IleAayos (' Nem.,' iv. 49). I am therefore inclined to think that the Black Sea being really "Aevos ab antique, such as

it proves to this day in the experience of all mariners, the Greeks had recourse to that system of euphemism whereby they sought to propitiate dreaded powers and avert unfavourable omens, and gave it what we may consider the coaxing name of Evivos. So also Evjuei/i'Ses, the Furies, and ev<avvfj.os f the left hand.

To return now to the Mediterranean, the first to employ this name, as the distinctive geographical designation of a particular sea, was Isidorus (' Origines,' xiii. 16, p. 181), who wrote in the seventh century. Before him Solinus makes use of it, but rather in the sense of a general description of land- locked seas, mediterranea maria (c. 18) ; for he still refers to the Mediterranean specially as nostrum mare (c. 23, 13). This and Mare Internum, or Intestinum, were the designations usual with Roman writers ; while the Greeks knew the Mediterranean as ecrw daXa.(rcra, fj evrbs flaAacro-a, ?/ eiros ' 0aAao-<ra, i] Ka$'

?}/xas 0aAcuro-a. The term /teaoycuos was used by the Ancient Greeks in the sense of interior, inland, or midland country (cf. rj /xo-oy'a. Thuc. i. 100, 120 ; Demosth. 326, 9), exactly as the Latin loca mediterranea, and, indeed, the English "mediterranean" (adj.) when applied to the central parts of a country as distinct from the sea-coast, or to rivers which end without reaching the sea, or to the inhabitants of an inland region, But the designation of the sea in question as Mroycios is of quite later times : when it first came into use with us I cannot state with any precision. Certain it is that we have now no other name for that sea*- "Ao-7rp77 0aAao-o-a being a mere rendering of the Turkish term, to be heard sometimes among the sailors in those waters, which, as I have already said, are not to be considered as confined strictly to the JSgaean Sea the so- called Archipelago.

This barbarous, but universally accepted term is one of the most curious examples of the distortion and transformation of the geographical nomenclature in the Levant, consequent upon the irruptions in those parts of swarms of Venetian adventurers,

0aAao-o-a when they refer to the White Sea in the Arctic Ocean, the Mydoye More of the Russians. It is this sea, no doubt, that Queen Victoria had in her mind when (as your corresi>ondent D., x. .*7b, points out) she playfully deprecated the proposal of the Turks in 1853 that the operations of the Bntish fleet should not include the Black hea.
 * Our geographical manuals speak of a