Re: Historical date help needed!

Tommie L Powell scripsit:

> A Central Asian tribe called the Avars captured about a dozen Slavic
> tribes as it moved across Crimea and southern Ukraine.  We don't know
> much about the Avars, but they reputedly had insatiable greed, so our
> words "avarice" and "avaricious" refer to them.
I thought this story sounded a little too good to be true, and it is.
"Avaritia" is regularly derived from the Latin verb "avere", to desire,
want, crave, which has citations as far back as Ennius, and appears also
in Cicero, Horace, Ovid, Livy, Catullus, Tacitus, and Lucretius.
It has cognates in Sanskrit, Welsh, and Old Irish.  There may have been
some reinforcement here, as in the case of the Tatars, who came to be
called "Tartars" in mediaeval Europe because they were associated with
Tartaros = Hell.

--
Knowledge studies others / Wisdom is self-known;      John Cowan
Muscle masters brothers / Self-mastery is bone;       jcowan@reutershealth.com
Content need never borrow / Ambition wanders blind;   www.ccil.org/~cowan
Vitality cleaves to the marrow / Leaving death behind.    --Tao 33 (Bynner)