βάτος
(Moer. β 23, Antiatt. β 17, Philemo [Laur.] 357)

D. General commentary

Three entries by Atticist lexicographers – Moeris (A.1), the Antiatticist (A.2), and Philemon (A.3) – deal with the grammatical gender of the noun βάτος (‘bramble’; on its other meanings, see below) and recommend the masculine as the approved Attic form while appearing to reject the feminine (for a possible alternative interpretation of Philemon’s entry, see below). The same prescription is found in Thomas Magister’s lexicon (B.3). This is one of several examples in which Atticist lexicographers discuss instances of gender change; see AGP vol. 2, Morphology, forthcoming, and the entries βῶλος, λάγυνος, ὄμφαξ, ὕσπληξ, φάρυγξ, and χάραξ.

The noun βάτος, meaning ‘bramble-bush’, may be traced back to a pre-Hellenic Mediterranean root: *ma(n)t-, from which μαντία (‘blackberry’) also derives – a noun that Dioscorides quotes as the Dacian equivalent of βάτος (cf. Dsc. 4.37 (rec. RV): βάτος· […] Ῥωμαῖοι σέντιξ, οἱ δὲ ῥούβουμ, οἱ δὲ μόρα <σιλ>βάτικα, Δάκοι μαντία […], ‘bramble: […] some Romans [call it] sentix, others rubum, others mora silvatica, the Dacians μαντία’); see Bertoldi (1933). The neuter τὸ βάτον is used to refer to ‘bramble’ as a fruit (i.e. ‘blackberry’; cf. D.S. 1.34.9). Through a semantic shiftSemantic shift, the noun βάτος is also used to refer to a kind of fish – the thornback skate (Raja clavata) – likely due to the presence of pointed teeth on its tail; cf. Strömberg (1943, 47) and also DELG and EDG s.v. βάτος.

The first literary attestation of βάτος as denoting ‘skate’ is in Epicharmus (frr. 52.2, 79.2), and in this meaning, the noun is invariably treated as masculine (see LSJ s.v. βάτος, B). Meanwhile, the question of the noun’s gender becomes more complicated when the word is used to denote a plant. The first literary occurrence of βάτος as denoting ‘bramble-bush’ is Homeric (Od. 24.230: χειρῖδάς τ’ ἐπὶ χερσὶ βάτων ἕνεκ(α), ‘[he wore] gloves on his hands because of the thorns’), but in this instance, the noun’s gender cannot be determined from the context. Up to the 3rd century BCE, βάτος was always used in the masculine (NB: in the analysis that follows, only those literary passages in which the noun’s gender can be determined have been taken into consideration), supporting the earlier usage of the masculine form: see, e.g., Hippocrates (Nat.Mul. 32.49 Bourbon [32.92 Littré] = C.1, Mul. 2.3 Potter [112.14 Littré]), Theophrastus (CP 1.17.8; HP 1.5.3), Hermesianax (FGrHist 691 T 2.6, quoted in Phot. Bibl. cod. 250.446b.33–9), Polybius (3.71.5, where the masculine participle ἐπιπεφυκότας agrees with the accusatives ἀκάνθας and βάτους: given that ἀκάνθας is feminine, βάτους must have been understood as a masculine form), the Septuagint (Ex. 3.2–4 = C.2, where βάτος denotes the burning bush through which God manifests himself to Moses; De. 33.16). The masculine form is not attested in any extant Attic work: Pollux’s reference to Aeschylus (B.1) makes no mention of the use of βάτος, since neither of the two Aeschylean passages quoted by Athenaeus to which Pollux appears to be referring (fr. 116 and fr. 264 = Ath. Epit. 2.51c–d; on them see also Carrara 2014, 58–9) includes the term (Pollux himself treats the noun as feminine). Furthermore, the alleged masculine attestation of the term in Aristophanes was based on an erroneous interpretation of schol. Theoc. 1.132–133a: schol. GEAPT read ἡ βάτος θηλυκῶς λέγεται· ὁμοίως ἐνταῦθα καὶ ἡ νάρκισσος· παρὰ δὲ τῷ Ἀριστοφάνει ἀρσενικῶς λέγεται (‘βάτος is used in the feminine, like νάρκισσος here; and [it is used] in the masculine by Aristophanes’), on the basis of which Dindorf, Bergk, and Kock included βάτος among Aristophanes’ fragments (fr. 754 CAF, where, moreover, it is marked as feminine, though see the editor’s correction in CAF vol. 3, 724). In fact, schol. (K) Theoc. 1.133a reads νάρκισσος· θηλυκῶς λέγεται ἐνταῦθα, παρὰ δὲ Ἀριστοφάνει ἀρσενικῶς (‘νάρκισσος (‘narcissus’): here, it is used in the feminine, while [it is used] in the masculine by Aristophanes’), so the masculine form that the scholium attributes to Aristophanes is νάρκισσος: cf. Ar. fr. 857 PCG = fr. 754 CAF (it should be noted that Kock himself eventually corrected the fragment’s content based on Sternbach’s observation [1886, 256–7]: cf. CAF vol. 3, 724).

The first attestations of the feminine form of βάτος are dated to the 3rd century BCE: cf. an epigram dubiously ascribed to Zenodotus (first half of the 3rd century) or Rhianus (second half of the 3rd century) that belongs to the epigram series dedicated to Timon the misanthrope (AP 7.315.2 = 3641 Gow–Page = C.3), and Callimachus’ Fourth Iamb (fr. 194.101 Pfeiffer, in which the pronominal τὴν δ(έ) refers to βάτος mentioned at l. 96, as the numeral μί(α) at l. 103 also does; cf. Dieg. 7.11–2, p. 177 Pfeiffer: ὑποτυχοῦσα βάτος παλαιά, ‘an old bramble interrupting [them]’). From this time onwards, the masculine and feminine forms coexist, with the feminine becoming increasingly predominant in the imperial period, at least on the basis of the Greek literary texts that survive. The New TestamentNew Testament text is emblematic of this fluctuation: while in Ev.Marc. 12.26 (at which Jesus reminds the Sadducees of the burning bush episode in Exodus) the masculine form is used, the term is treated as feminine in the corresponding scene depicted in the Gospel of Luke (C.4; cf. also NT Act.Ap. 7.35: ἐν τῇ βάτῳ). In Christian authors of the imperial and late antique periods, the feminine form occurs more commonly, with some exceptions. An illustrative example is the case of Clement of Alexandria: in both the Protrepticus (1.8.1) and the Stromata (4.17.106.4), he employs the feminine form, while he uses the masculine in the Paedagogus (2.8.75.1–2 = C.6).

As far as Atticist authors are concerned, as already noted, Pollux (B.1) uses the feminine form, as does Lucian (C.5). Both forms are attested in Galen, who is possibly influenced in his choice of the masculine by its Hippocratic usage (see above): the masculine form occurs in e.g. De propr. animi cuiusl. affect. dign. et cur. 7.16 De Boer (5.40.4 Kühn), De simpl. med. temp. et fac. 11.748.19 Kühn; the feminine form in e.g. Vict.Att. 4.24 Kalbfleisch, De alim. fac. 2.38.1 Helmreich (6.619.14 Kühn; cod. W has τοῦ βάτου instead).

Regarding the emergence of the feminine form and its subsequent predominance, two hypotheses may be advanced. First, the specialisation of masculine βάτος to denote the ‘skate’ – cf. Moer. β 22Moer. β 22: βατίς θηλυκῶς τὸ θαλάττιον Ἀττικοί· βάτος Ἕλληνες, ‘Users of Attic [call] βατίς (‘skate’) the fish, in the feminine. Users of Greek [call it] βάτος’ – may have given rise to the need to distinguish the fish from the plant, thus reserving the feminine for the latter. In this regard, it is worth stressing the existence of a third meaning for masculine βάτος, i.e. the unit of measurement for liquids bath, a Hebrew loanword; cf. LSJ s.v. βάτος (C). However, the limited scope of the usage of the masculine βάτος as denoting bath makes it difficult to determine whether it was instrumental in the specialisation of the feminine βάτος to denote the plant. Another possible explanation for the predominance of the feminine is the Greek language’s general tendency to identify fruit-bearing plants with feminine names (for a recent attempt to explain the feminine gender of PIE tree names, see Hackstein 2021, 196–8). Nevertheless, it is evident that the Atticist lexicographers’ interest lies in promoting the more ancient masculine form (which may have been the Attic form), in contrast to the feminine form that their contemporaries were increasingly using.

Returning to the individual entries in the Atticist lexica, only Moeris (A.1) explicitly mentions βάτος with the meaning ‘bramble’ (τὸ τῆς ἀκάνθης εἶδος). In line with the lexicon’s standard binary structure (though it should be noted that the label Ἀττικοί is missing here), Moeris opposes the feminine noun employed by the ἝλληνεςἝλληνες (on the multifaceted meaning of this label, see entry Moeris, Ἀττικιστής) to the allegedly approved usage of the masculine. The wording of the other two Atticist lexicographical entries does not clarify which meaning of βάτος is being invoked. The similarity between the entry in Antiatt. β 17 (A.2) and a scholium to Clement of Alexandria’s Paedagogus (see apparatus), who in the corresponding locus employs the noun to mean ‘bramble’ (cf. C.6), suggests that the lexicographer’s interest lies in the term used to indicate the plant. The possible agreement with Moeris’ prescription supports this interpretation. Philemon’s entry (A.3) is less certain, given that the assimilation between βάτος and λόφοςλόφος (‘crest’) accommodates multiple options: λόφος denotes neither a plant, a fish, nor an animal, and the reason for this pairing may be merely grammatical. Furthermore, we cannot exclude the possibility that Philemon was also interested in the accentuationAccent of the noun βάτος, which he compares to the paroxytone λόφος to distinguish it from the verbal adjective βατός, meaning ‘accessible’. The interest in these forms’ accentuation is also evident in Eustathius’ passage (B.2), which is also marked by the same semantic ambiguity, since ἡ βάτος and ὁ βάτος are mentioned without any explanation of their meaning, so that it is impossible to ascertain whether the scholar is citing the two variants of the plant name or whether he wishes to distinguish between the two different terms that are used to denote the bramble and the skate.

E. Byzantine and Modern Greek commentary

In both Medieval and Byzantine Greek, the noun βάτος continued to be used mainly in the feminine, following the trend that had emerged in the imperial period: for Byzantine Greek, see, e.g., Constantinus VII Oratio de translatione sancti Gregorii theologi rec. 1, 37.13 Flusin and Michael Psellus Orationes hagiographicae 3a.383; for Medieval Greek see e.g. Digenis Akritis cod. Z 6.2481. Meanwhile, in Modern Greek the standard form is the masculine one, although the feminine remains in use as a learned form (see ILNE and LKN s.v.). The shift of feminine nouns ending in -ος to the masculine gender is part of the general process of elimination of feminine nouns from the second declension that took place in Medieval Greek, although some traces of this development are already evident from the 2nd century CE onwards (see Hatzidakis 1885; Gignac 1981, 39–41).

F. Commentary on individual texts and occurrences

N/A