Noctes Atticae

The words of Marcus Varro in the twenty fifth book of his Humran Antiquities, in which he has interpreted a line of Homer contrary to the general opinion.

IT happened in the course of conversations which we carried on about the dates of various inventions for human use, that a young man not without learning observed that the use of spartum or

Spanish broom

also was for a long time unknown in the land of Greece and that it was imported from Spain many years after the taking of Ilium. One or two half-educated fellows who were present there, of the class that the Greeks call a)gorai=oi, or

haunters of the market-place,

laughed in derision of this statement, and declared that the man who had made it had read a copy of Homer which happened to lack the following verse: [*](Iliad ii. 135.)

1. And rotted the ship's timbers, loosed the ropes (spa/rta).

Then the youth, in great vexation, replied:

It was not my book that lacked that line, but you who badly lacked a teacher, if you believe that spa/rta in that verse means what we call spartum, or 'a

v3.p.213

rope of Spanish broom'

They only laughed the louder, and would have continued to do so, had he not produced the twenty-fifth book of Varro's Human Antiquities, in which Varro writes as follows of that Homeric word: [*](Frag. 4, Mirsch.)

I believe that spa/rta in Homer does not mean sparta, or 'Spanish broom,' but rather spa/rtoi, a kind of broom which is said to grow in the Theban territory. In Greece there has only recently been a supply of spartum, imported from Spain. The Liburnians did not make use of that material either, but as a rule fastened their ships together with thongs, [*](See sutiles naves, Plin. N. H. xxiv. 65.) while the Greeks made more use of hemp, tow, and other cultivated plants (sativis), from which ropes got their name of sparta.

Since Varro says this, I have grave doubts whether the last syllable in the Homeric word ought not to have an acute accent; unless it be because words of this kind, when they pass from their general meaning to the designation of a particular thing, are distinguished by a difference in accent.