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Re: orion-list a test of the Nicolaus of Damascus proposal
According to Russel Gmirken:
>
> Stephen Goranson writes:
>
[. . .]
>
Russell Gmirken replies:
> Pliny clearly utilized sources who in turn excerpted Nicolas' _Collection
> of Remarkable Customs_. His use of Isigonus in book 7 demonstrates the
> point.
[. . .]
> Incidentally, that Nicolas of Damascus was the source of Pliny's excursus
> on the Essenes may explain Pliny's curious reference to their living beyond
> the "noxious exhalations" of the Dead Sea coast. In _de Plantis_ [On
> Plants], whose authorship by Nicolas of Damascus is considered beyond
> question, Nicolas extensively discusses the process by which heavy salt water
> is produced by evaporation from lighter fresh water that has been confined to
> a certain place. Nicolas illustrates this process by reference to the Dead
> Sea, in which "nothing can sink or be born" (On Plants 2.824a). Nicolas also
> makes the obvious point that salty earth produced in this fashion cannot
> support plant life. So far as I can tell, only in the writings of Nicolas
> are combined the notions of evaporation, toxicity, and the Dead Sea. I take
> the sense of Pliny's region of "noxious exhalations" bordering the Dead Sea
> to refer to the area near the water where the salt content of the soil,
> created by evaporation ["exhalations"] renders the soil toxic to plants (not
> that it kills humans to breathe, as the harvesters of bitumen floating in the
> Dead Sea illustrates).
Using Rackham's translation as the basis for establishing Nicolas of
Damascus as Pliny's source for the passage about the Essenes is a chancy
business. While in our exchange in February 1998 concerning translation
of the passage Jay Treat and I agreed about little, neither of us could in
good conscience accept Rackham's translation of *nocent* as "noxious
vapors." I'm sending an excerpt from my reply to Jay on the Orion list on
February 26, 1998.
---------------- <excerpt of email posted to Orion>-----------------
<Re: "noxious exhalations">
Jay Treat:
> wooden translation of the Latin would be, "On the western side [i.e., of
> the Dead Sea], the Essenes avoid the shores wherever they do harm -- a
> solitary tribe and one more extraordinary than others in the whole
> world:
> without any woman, having given up all sex, without money, companion to
> date-palms."
Sigrid Peterson replied:
This part I translated "They completely shun (or flee, or exile themselves
from) that which hurts [=pollutes?]." I wondered whether <noceo> might not
be the best translation of the concept of impurity in the Judaisms of the
time--that which harms or hurts. It will take further investigation to
establish the equation I'm suggesting here.
I have completely departed, here, from Rackham's "but out of range of the
noxious exhalations of the coast." I don't see any Latin words underlying
"but", "out of range of", nor are there genitives for "noxious
exhalations" and "of the coast."
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> Best regards,
> Russell Gmirkin
> RGmyrken@aol.com
>
All the best,
Sigrid Peterson UPenn petersig@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
For private reply, e-mail to petersig@ccat.sas.upenn.edu (Sigrid Peterson)
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