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Re: orion news article; Pliny again
On Wed, 28 Jan 1998 dwashbur@nyx.net wrote:
> Since my past post I have discussed the meaning of "infra" with
> several people who know Latin a lot better than I do, and each of
> them says they have never heard of a "south of" meaning for this
> word. It seems to me that attributing this meaning to Pliny amounts
> to bending the linguistic evidence to fit the theory, and I repeat:
> if this settlement does indeed turn out to be Essene, it's
> unnecessary.
You may have missed the point of the translation. My understanding was
that infra here could mean "below" in the sense of "downstream" (based on
the flow of the Jordan, I presume), and thus in this case implying
"south," the general direction in which the writer seems to be moving in
his descriptions. The question is not whether "infra" means "south" but
whether the context requires that meaning.
I first heard of the claim of an Essene village above Ein Gedi from a
student who spent last January there participating in a dig and was
wondering how long it would take for someone to go public with the theory.
David W. Suter
Saint Martin's College
Lacey, WA 98503
dsuter@catadon.stmartin.edu