02-25-2012, 03:40 AM
Quote:Could you please explain why do you take the meaning of arma to be more obvious that the meaning of armus in this case?Most readers of this forum will be familiar with the Latin word bracchium for the arm and humerus for the shoulder. We might suppose that a lance that is supposedly only used under-arm, or perhaps couched in the arm-pit, would employ one of these standard terms.
As far as I recall, Tomlin does not explain why his interpretation uses a more unusual word. This would need to be derived either from the Greek ἁρμός, meaning a "joint" (specifically the shoulder joint), or the (in my experience, rare) Latin word armus, used almost exclusively of animals to mean the haunch or fore-quarter (which, in a human, would be called the shoulder). Tomlin does not explain which one he envisages. (Lewis & Short register one poetic usage of armus: Lucan uses it to mean a point somewhere along the human arm, in a context where it was no doubt the scansion and rhyming scheme that ruled out bracchium or humerus.)
Quote:It seems that by that logic, we lose the argument that subarmalo in the Vindolanda tablet has to do with garment simply because it is listed along with some items of clothing in the tablet. From what you say, it can be anything.I don't follow how subarmalis cannot both be a textile garment (Vindolanda) and an item of soldiers' belongings (Carlisle). The subject matter of each tablet seems fairly clear, even if the ordering is jumbled.
Quote:In case of the Carlisle tablet, it is a javelin, carried alongside (Josephus, BJ 3.96), likely below (sub) the rider's arm, and deriving from sub+armus. In case of SHA, it is a garment, deriving from sub+arma.Before we get carried away, please note that Josephus does not mention a lance carried under the arm or couched in the arm-pit (or anything to do with arms at all, in fact). Or am I mistaken?
