10 s. x. OCT. 31,
NOTES AND QUERIES.
351
MR. MACMICHAEL'S reply raised in my
mind another question, as to the origin of
the term " Pipe and green wax " ; but, on
referring to ' Tomlins's Law Dictionary,'
dated 1820, I found a solution of my diffi-
culty.
The Clerk of the Pipe was so called " from the shape of that Roll, which is put together like a Pipe," in which he set down the accounts of debts due to the King ; and I suppose the green wax (it would probably be red at the present day) is merely the colour of the wax on which the seal was imprinted. Hie ET UBIQTJE.
MEDITERRANEAN : FIRST USE OF THE
NAME (10 S. x. 308). I have not found
d<rwpi in any dictionary. Can it be a
misprint for ao-Trpr?, " white," in Modern
Greek ?
According to ' A Greek-English Dictionary,' by A. Kyriakides (Nicosia, Cyprus, 1892), and ' A Concise Dictionary of the English and Modern Greek Languages, as actually Written and Spoken,' by A. N. Jannaris, Ph.D. (English -Greek, London, 1895), the Modern Greek for "mediterranean" is /xecroye'os. The former gives 07 Meo-oyeios (tfaAacrcra), the Mediterranean.
In ' Neohellenica : an Introduction to Modern Greek,' by Prof. Michael Constanti- nides and Major-General H. T. Rogers, R.E. (London, 1892), is the following example :
Ei/ eret 1571 cu Kara -njv Mecroyetov Xpicrrtai/tKcu Swauets. . . . aTrereAecrai/
ctTT tcrra)i/.
"In the year 1571 the Christian powers on the
Mediterranean ...... formed a league against the in-
In the same book (p. 296) is the following : oarov Kal cts TO. CTrtAcuTra vrjo-ia TTJS
"As in the remaining islands in the White Sea
[Aegaean]."
Elsewhere in the book occurs the ordinary name Atycuoi/ TreAayos (pp. 125, 299).
Smith's ' Dictionary ' would appear to have taken that small part of the Mediter- ranean called acnrpr) 6d\aaro-a for the whole.
In Murray's ' Handbook to the Mediter- ranean,' by Lieut.-Col. R. L. Playfair, 1881, p. 116, it is remarked that the ^Egean Sea is by the Turks called the "White Sea," to distinguish it from the Black Sea. The same remark in the same words occurs in Murray's 4 Handbook ---- Greece,' 1872, p. 324.
Musurus Pasha in his translation of Dante into Greek (Modern) has a note on ' Paradise,'
ix. 87 of his translation, in which he speaks
of the length of the Mediterranean (rj eKracns
rfjs Mecroyeiov). ROBERT PIERPOINT.
I think that the writer of the article ' Internum Mare ' ia. Smith's ' Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography ' must have made a mistake in saying that " the Greeks of the present day call the Mediterranean the ' White Sea ' ('Acrw/oi $aAacrcra)." In the first place, the only name for the Mediter- ranean in Modern Greek is 17 /xecroyetos
- aAacrcra, as may be seen from two Modern
Greek lexicons published in Athens, one by Byzantius, published in 1856, and the other by Pervanoglu, published in 1900. In these dictionaries there is no hint of the Great Sea being known to the Greeks of the present day by any other name. But perhaps the writer had in his mind a name used by the people in some Greek dialect, and not recorded in a dictionary of the literary language. Even so, I think there must be some error in the transcription. For the Modern Greek word for " white " is ao-?rpos (not ao-cu/n), as may be seen from the Greek Ducange and the two lexicons above mentioned.
From the word acrrrpov, "white coin," is derived " asper," well known in commerce as the name of a Turkish money of account.
A. L. MAYHEW. Oxford.
The following extract from Sir Edward Bunbury's ' History of Ancient Geography,' 2nd ed., London, 1883, vol. ii. pp. 678-9, will answer part of MR. LYNN'S query :
" In one respect Solinus shows a marked approach to a well-established point of geographical nomen- clature in later times by the use of the term ' medi- terranean ' to designate the chain of inland seas extending from the Strait of the Columns to the interior of the Pontus Euxinus. He does not indeed as yet use it as a proper name for the great inland sea so called in modern times, which he still designates only as 'nostrum mare'; but it would soon come to be employed in that restricted and definite sense, when once its use was admitted as a geographical term. The first extant author who employs it distinctly as a proper name is Isidorus, who wrote in the seventh century."
In a note the same writer quotes two cases in which Solinus uses this adjective cap. 18. 1 (p. 92 of Mommsen's edition), " mediterranea maria," and cap. 23. 14 _ , 105), " mediterraneis sinibus," adding that Pliny frequently uses the term, but always as meaning " inland " as opposed to maritime," this being the only sense in which the word is employed by classical authors. W. A. B. COOLIDGE.
Am Sandigenstutz, Grindelwald.
