[b-greek] Re: Sexy words

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Wed Oct 18 2000 - 12:06:17 EDT


At 8:02 AM -0400 10/18/00, Bart Ehrman wrote:
> I'm interested in finding Greek terms involving sex and sexual
>activities, terms that would have been vulgar or crude (the phi-words in
>Greek :-)) but that were given euphemistic renderings by Liddell and Scott
>(or other 19th century lexicographers). This is a sudden and urgent
>interest (since I suddenly realized that it might relate to a conference
>paper I'm writing, and it needs to be written in the next few days...);
>but since almost all of my work is in NT and other early Jewish and
>Christian texts, I must confess not to have a slew of such beasts at my
>ready disposal.
>
> Any words come to mind?

I don't know how far you want to carry this, but a thought just came to me
that it might be worth your while doing a quick scan of "LOUKIOS H ONOS,"
that 2nd-3rd(?) century Koine romance that is one of the chief inspirations
for Apuleius Latin literary and religious classic _Metamorphoses_, better
known as "The Golden Ass." As has been noted here more than once in the
last couple years, an attractive on-line text of LOUKIOS has been mounted at

        http://deeneserver.deene.ufu.br/wwwonos/onos1-1.html

and the successive pages. If you have the Ionic font installed in your
system, it comes out beautifully right there on the screen. Anyhow, this
little novelette has some rather salacious sections; on the whole it's an
easy text to read, but when you get to the bedroom scene you'll be sent to
your lexicon to find meanings for some words you haven't ever seen before
and to find some new meanings to words that you may know very well.

On the other hand, I've sometimes wondered about the LXX of the Song of
Solomon, but I won't pursue that line of inquiry here.

--

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu

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