Re: OT: Workshops Review No.3 '04

Benct Philip Jonsson scripsit:

> It's the past participle from GAYAS which in 'The Etymologies'
> meant 'dreadful' but later JRRT changed his mind and made it
> mean 'blessed'.  It is supposed to translate Benedictus,
> but I kind of like the ambiguity!
So if people were called Maledictus, how would that come out in Swedish?

Latin "sacer" is nicely ambiguous between "sacred" and "accursed": usually
it means the former, but in the XII Tables (the earliest written Roman
law, now extant only in fragments) we find "Si clienti patronus fraudem
fecerit, sacer esto" = "If a patron commits fraud on his dependent,
let him be accursed."

That subjected the erring aristocrat to the punishments of religous law,
which tended to be archaic and extreme:  e.g. he who reaped another's
crop by night was hanged on a tree as a sacrifice to Ceres.

> There was a little discussion of the name on
> elfling@yahoogroups.com.  Search for the term
> 'holy dread' since 'Aestan' occurs in my sig.
For you on honey-dew have fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise?

--
"In my last lifetime,                           John Cowan
I believed in reincarnation;                    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
in this lifetime,                               jcowan@reutershealth.com
I don't."  --Thiagi                             http://www.reutershealth.com

Reply