[Sca-cooks] magpie / Athenaeus

V A phoenissa at gmail.com
Wed Mar 5 17:06:39 PST 2008


Liddell & Scott's Greek-English Lexicon (the definitive source...) gives the
definition for "kitta" as "jay, Garrulus glandarius."  Magpies are Pica
pica.  So I would say this is just a case of a lazy translator who assumed
that jays and magpies are the same species.


Vittoria

On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 3:06 PM, Terry Decker <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
wrote:

>
> >
> > <<
> >> "jays" instead of "magpies". That's not the same kind of bird? (...)
> >
> > Magpies and jays are both members of the family Corvidae (as are crows).
> > In
> > Latin, "pica" appears to be used for both jays and magpies, so this is
> > probably a case where the translators chose different meanings for the
> > same
> > word.  Pica is now the genus name for magpies.
> >
> > Bear  >>
> >
> > Thanks a lot! However, as you are well aware, the text of Athenaeus is
> > written
> >
> > in Greek. The passage in question: ed. Gulick vol. II, page 106.
> >
> > E.
>
> IIRC, the Latin derives from the Greek usage of "kissa" ar "kitta" for jay
> or magpie, but my knowledge of the language is so slim that you might wish
> to check to see if the term was used interchangeably as it appears to have
> been used in Latin.
>
> Bear
>
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