Ταρσοὶ καλάμων

Notes (2)

1. The headword phrase lacks a gloss. (For tarso/s cf. tau 130, tau 132, and plural at tau 133. tau 132 is the city of that name.) In addition to the quotation provided here, the phrase tarsoi\ kala/mwn or tarsoi\ kala/mou is attested, with somewhat different meanings, in three ancient authors: Herodotus 1.179.2 (reed matting used to strengthen brickwork), Thucydides 2.76.1 (baskets filled with clay used in the construction of a siege mound) and Aeneas Tacticus 32.2 (wicker screens against missiles). The passage of Thucydides is cited at epsilon 1282, epsiloniota 109, tau 130. Compare also Hesychius tau210 (Cunningham/Latte), where the accusative plural lemma tarsou\s kala/mwn is clearly cited from Herodotus.
1. 1An extract from a late antique classicizing historian, derived from the Excerpta Constantiniana. Bernhardy (1853) first assigned the extract to Priscus, and it was thereafter included in collected fragments of Priscus by Dindorf (1870) and Bornmann (1979), but omitted without argumentation by Blockley (1981-3), who is followed by Carolla (2008). Rance (2015) presents textual, historical and linguistic evidence in favour of Priscus' authorship. For the Lazi of the southern Caucasus↗ see also epsilon 2315. Only two Roman-Lazi conflicts are known, the first in the mid 450s (reported in fragments of Priscus), the second in 541-8 (described by Procopius, who offers no parallel to the extract). ↩
2. 2This alternative meaning derives from a glossary of Herodotean usages. See Glossae in Herodotum (Ἡροδότου λέξεις) 1.48 in H. Stein (ed.), Herodoti Historiae (Berlin 1869-71), II 441-82 at 452, 470; repr. in K. Latte and H. Erbse (edd.), Lexica Graeca minora (Hildesheim 1965), 191-231 at 200, 218. The glossarist seems to have misconstrued Herodotus' technical description of the construction of the walls of Babylon at 1.179.2 (see n.1 above), where the phrase tarsoi\ kala/mwn in fact refers not to a place for drying bricks but to reed matting inserted at regular intervals to bind the brickwork.
   The reading prasia/, 'allotment' or 'garden-plot', is transmitted in all the Suda mss, and accepted by Adler, but the original gloss reads more plausibly trasia/, a wicker frame or crate used to dry bricks or foodstuffs (see LSJ 1811, s.v. trasia/). See likewise Gregory of Corinth, De dialectis 4.643 (Schäfer), which derives from an older copy of the Suda or a common source. The close palaeographical resemblance leaves little doubt that the prasia/ of the Suda mss arose from a misreading of trasia/. ↩