A river in Attica,[1] a torrent. The word [is used] in reference to those who speak unpleasantly, but [it arises] due to the sound of the river.
Aristophanes [writes]: "a snatcher, a screamer, one who has the voice of Kykloboros!"[2]
*kuklobo/ros: potamo\s th=s *)attikh=s, xeima/rrous. e)pi\ tw=n kakofw/nwn o( lo/gos, dia\ de\ to\n h)=xon tou= potamou=. *)aristofa/nhs: a(/rpac, kekra/kths, *kuklobo/rou fwnh\n e)/xwn.
[1] =
Photius,
Lexicon kappa1180 Theodoridis.
[2]
Aristophanes,
Knights 137 (web address 1), in reference to Kleon (
kappa 1731). See already at
kappa 1261; cf.
Pollux 6.146, 10.85;
Hesychius kappa4476. No non-lexicographical reference to this supposed river is made outside
Aristophanes (here and at fr. 636 Kock). One of the
scholia to the
Knights passage offers a different explanation, a circular place where things were sold, yet another scholion to the same passage says that it is not "Kykloboros" that means this but
ku/klos ('circle'), and that the term
kuklobo/ros refers to Kleon's having been raised in the milieu of the marketplace. A solution to the problem may arise from a fragment of the atthidographer
Demon (FGrH 327 F8), preserved in
Hesychius omicron309 (also, more sketchily and without attribution, in
omicroniota 121): the people of the Attic deme of Oinoe (near the Marathonian plain) had diverted a local torrent (
charadra) for irrigation, but at a time of high waters the stream broke its bounds and inundated the
ku/klous ('circles', i.e. 'marketplaces'(?)) of the region. Perhaps on this occasion the otherwise unnamed torrent received the (temporary?) nickname of Kykloboros (i.e. 'market-place devourer'). This, at any rate is the theory of Wilamowitz (1882), followed by Jacoby (commentary ad loc.).
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von (1882), "Kykloboros," Hermes 17: 647-8
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