[B-Greek] Josephus Ant. 18.6.7

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Aug 21 06:12:45 EDT 2007


On Aug 21, 2007, at 4:21 AM, Thomas J. Kraus wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
>
> In his Antiquitates judaicae 18.6.7 Flavius Josephus writes:
> BOUBWNA DE hOI RWMAIOI TON ORNIN TOUTON KALOUSIN.
>
> My major interest is on BOUBWNA: recently I found in an essay that  
> BOUBWN
> should have been integrated into Greek from Latin bubo. Another form
> mentioned that should correspond with Latin bubo should be BUAS  
> (but I do
> not see any morphological link with this).
>
> Questions:
> (1) Does anybody know anything about such a link (is it plausible)?
> (2) Does anybody know other instances in which BOUBWN (or BUAS) are  
> used?
>
> Thanks in advance for reflecting about this
> semantic/etymological/morphological issue.

I'm not sure that I fully understand the question. The sentence cited  
pretty clearly indicates that BOUBWN (gen. BOUBWNOS) is a Hellenized  
form of the Latin word BUBO (gen. BUBONIS); this is very much like  
other "loan-words" taken into Greek from Latin, such as proper names,  
KIKERWN (gen. KIKERWNOS) from Latin CICERO/CICERONIS or AUGOUSTOUS/OU  
from Latin AUGUSTUS/I.

LSJ does have an entry for BUAS:
βύας, ου, ὁ,  [BUAS, OU, hO] eagle-owl, Strix bubo,  
Arist.HA592b9 (v.l. βρύας [BRUAS]) βύας ἔβυξε [BUAS  
EBUXE] an owl hooted, D.C.56.29, 72.24. (Onomatop.)

It's interesting that BUAS is a first-declension masculine (it has to  
be with a genitive in -OU).  It could very well be that it is  
etymologiclly derived from the same IE root as the Latin BUBO, but  
the Josephus entry simply gives a Latin name for the bird in his  
narrative account.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)




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