[Meaning something] rather hollow.
"But they contrived [defenses] that by slackness or simplicity sufficed against the archers."[1]
And in the Epigrams: "and the skin hangs slack on my neck."[2] And elsewhere: "because for you over [the] kindling a flat round-cake hangs."[3]
*lagaro/n: u(po/kenon. e)mhxanw=nto de/, o(/sa lagaro/thti h)\ a(palo/thti pro\s ta\s tocei/as a)nth/rkei. kai\ e)n *)epigra/mmasi: kai\ lagaro\n deirh=| de/rma perikre/matai. kai\ au)=qis: soi\ ga\r u(pe\r sxida/kwn lagaro\n popa/neuma pro/keitai.
The headword (already in
Hesychius lambda35 but with a different gloss:
to\ mh\ nasto/n, "what is not firm") is the neuter nominative/accusative singular of this adjective, possibly though not necessarily extracted from the quotations given from the
Greek Anthology. The elusive sense of this adjective resists any firm representation by an English equivalent.
cf.
sigma 1733.
[1] Quotation (from late historiography) unidentifiable.
[2] From an erotic epigram by Paul the Silentiary (originally a sort of head usher in the imperial palace, who enforced quiet, but by the sixth century CE an official of senatorial rank):
Greek Anthology 5.264.6 (not Adler's '263'). For Paul, to whom about eighty epigrams are ascribed, see generally OCD(4) s.v. Paulus (p.1096). (The
Anthology is abundantly represented in the Suda: see Cameron 278-282).
[3] Philip of Thessalonica was an epigrammatist of the first century CE and himself an editor of an anthology, lost to us but embodied in the
Anthology, where some eighty of his epigrams appear. Consult OCD(4) s.v.
Philippus(2) (p.1163); Gow 15; Cameron 15. The verse in question, 6.231.3 in the
Anthology's dedicatory epigrams, consecrates a sacrificial cake to Isis; but it accords ill with the sense the Suda ascribes to the adjective. W.R. Paton, the Loeb translator, renders it 'crumbling', but 'flat' seems more likely from comparison with the application of the adjective to a tortoise's shell in
Philostratus Maior,
Imagines 1.10.2. See further extracts from
Greek Anthology 6.231 at
alpha 4223,
epsilon 1499,
kappa 1222,
kappa 1310,
mu 447, and
psi 31.
Alan D.E. Cameron, The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes. Oxford: 1993
A.S.F. Gow, The Greek Anthology: Sources and Ascriptions. London: 1958
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