[Meaning] the cooking tool [of that name].[1] Also the tripod of Apollo.[2] Also a mortar, a round stone, in which they crush pulses and anything else.[3]
*(/olmos: to\ mageiriko\n e)rgalei=on. kai\ o( tri/pous tou= *)apo/llwnos. kai\ o(lmeio/s, stroggu/los li/qos, ei)s o(\n ko/ptousin o)/spria kai\ a)/lla tina/.
The headword -- apparently generated by
Aristophanes,
Wasps 238: see below -- is a masculine noun in the nominative singular. See LSJ s.v.,
epsilon 1387, and the following notes for other meanings.
[1] At
Aristophanes,
Wasps 238 (web address 1), the chorus-leader recounts how the chorus pilfered
to\n o(/lmon (
the round smooth stone, accusative singular of the headword) one night. One scholion to the passage identifies this as
o(/lmon to\ mageiriko/n,
a cooking stone; but see below, n.3 (end). The glossing adjective is the neuter nominative/vocative/accusative (and masculine accusative) singular form of
mageiriko/s, -h/, -o/n (
fit for a cook); see LSJ s.v.
[2] The Pythia, Apollo's priestess at
Delphi (OCD(4) s.v. Delphic oracle), employed two kinds of tripod: a three-legged bronze bowl for holding oracular tokens, and a stool upon which she sat while delivering prophecies; cf.
pi 3137,
theta 281 (end), and Smith, pp. 1014-5.
[3] A scholion (= D
scholia) to
Homer,
Iliad 11.147 (web address 2) is identical, except that it defines a
o(/lmos as a
koi=los li/qos (
hollow stone). Given the text, this is problematic. This verse and its context describe how Agamemnon slew Hippolochus. The Greek king cuts off the arms of his opponent with a sword, beheads him, and then sends the Trojan's armless, headless torso "rolling like a round stone among the throng", to quote the Loeb edition's translation (Murray, p. 503). This rendering of the passage thus combines the scholiast's interpretation of
o(/lmos as a stone with the Suda lexicographer's view that it is round, not hollow. Objecting to the very dubious image of a headless, armless human torso rolling about the field of battle like a round stone, Hainsworth (p. 241) suggests that the
o(/lmos of
Homer's simile signifies a hollowed-out log. He cites Hesiod,
Works and Days 423 (web address 3), where the farmer is advised
to hew a three-foot mortar (
o(/lmon tripo/dhn ta/mnein) during the autumnal woodcutting season, as precedence for this proposed exegesis (Hainsworth, ibid.). Indeed, a second scholion to
Aristophanes,
Wasps 238 (web address 1), quotes this very line of Hesiod and observes that it could be understood
as the mortar being made of wood (
w(s culi/nou o)/ntos tou= o(/lmou). Finally,
Hesychius omicron595 s.v.
o(/lmos notes that this tool, in addition to being a stone for crushing plants, could be a cylinder.
W. Smith, ed., Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 3rd edn., New York: Harper & Brothers, 1886
A.T. Murray, trans., Homer: Iliad, Books 1-12, rev. W.F. Wyatt, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999
J.B. Hainsworth, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. III, gen. ed. G.S. Kirk, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993
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