ἀριθμός
(Philemo [Laur.] 355)

D. General commentary

This entry (A.1) from the recensio plenior of Philemon’s lexicon, preserved in cod. L (Laur. plut. 91 sup. 10, 14th century CE), condemns the pronunciation of ἀριθμός (‘number’) as ἀρθμός. As Brown (2008, 143) observes, ‘this lemma in Philemon is the only testimony in the lexicographers to a syncopated pronunciation of ἀριθμός which might have led to confusion with the noun ἀρθμός, meaning connection, link, or friendship’.

The rare noun ἀρθμός is a derivative of the root ἀρ- ‘to join’ (cf. ἀραρίσκω ‘to fit’) with the moderately productive action-noun suffix -θμός (on which, see Chantraine 1933, 136–8; cf. with a different suffix, ἄρθρον ‘joint’). It is attested exclusively in poetry with the meaning ‘bond, league, friendship’. It is first found in theHomeric Hymn to Hermes (C.1), then in a lyric passage of the Prometheus Bound (C.2), and in a fragment of the dithyrambographer Telestes (C.3); in the Hellenistic age, it is revived by Callimachus (C.4) and Apollonius Rhodius (C.5), and finally, it appears twice in Nonnus’ Paraphrase of the Gospel of John (C.6, C.7). The few derivatives of this noun share a similar distribution: the adjective ἄρθμιοςἄρθμιος (‘united’) is found in archaic poetry (Hom. Od. 16.427, Thgn. 326.1312) and in Herodotus; the verbs ἀρθμέωἀρθμέω (‘to be united’; Hom. Il. 7.302, Apoll.Rh. 1.1344) and ξυν-/συναρθμέω (‘to fit together’; Hp. Mul. 169.2, Apoll.Rh. 4.418) are also Ionic and poetic. The significantly more frequent noun ἀριθμός (‘number’), attested since the Odyssey (4.451, etc.), includes the same suffix but derives from the root *h_₂rei- ‘to count’ (cf. νήριτος ‘countless’, Old Norse rím ‘account’, Old Irish rím ‘number’, perhaps Latin rītus ‘religious rite’; see DELG 108–9; EDG 131) and is thus unrelated to ἀρθμός, although some modern scholars still support the derivation of ἀριθμός from the root of ἀραρίσκω (see, e.g., Becker 1963, 123 n. 7; Perilli 2017, 27).

Philemon’s brief discussion (A.1) explicitly refers to pronunciation with the use of the term ἐκφωνέω, demonstrating his condemnation of a syncopated realisation of ἀριθμός that produced a form ἀρθμός. It is true that, as Brown (2008, 143) observed, the latter would have been homophonous with the noun meaning ‘bond’. It may have been the case that the risk of confusion between these two forms served as an additional reason to condemn the syncopated pronunciation, although such was the rarity and literary character of ἀρθμός (‘bond’) that the actual danger was, in all likelihood, minimal: arguably, speakers who knew and employed ἀρθμός were sufficiently careful in their pronunciation not to drop the /i/ in ἀριθμός. At any rate, the entry’s text does not explicitly discuss ἀρθμός (‘bond’). Some ancient erudite sources trace a connection between the two words, deriving ἀριθμός from ἀρθμός through the addition of ι. A derivational chain beginning with the (non-existent) present ἄρω (abstracted from the Homeric aorist participle ἄρσαντες) and culminating in ἀριθμός by way of ἀρδμός (or ἀρσμός) and ἀρθμός is attributed to Herodian (B.2). The same sources also report a different derivation, ascribed to Apollonius DyscolusApollonius Dyscolus, starting from ἁλίζω ‘to gather’ via the hypothetical abstract noun ἀλισμός. The etymology of ἀριθμός from the root of ἀραρίσκω and ἀρθμός is also discussed by Syrianus (B.3) in the 5th century CE, commenting on Arist. Metaph. 1078b.9–12.

Several entries in Philemon’s lexicon are still seemingly concerned with syncope, and they are collected under this heading in Brown’s (2008, 226) study. However, most such cases could equally be concerned with different word formation strategies. One such example is that of the synonyms νεογνός and νεόγονος for ‘newborn’ (see entry νεογνός). Two other cases are the entries dealing with the comparative ὀψ(ι)αίτερον ‘later’ (see entry ὀψαίτερος, ὀψίτερος) and the compound adjective ὑπαίθριος/ὕπαιθρος ‘in the open air’ (see entry ὕπαιθρον). The case of ἀριθμός > ἀρθμός is clearer than the above, in that it probably reflects a phonetic reality. Post-classical Greek was characterised by frequent loss of unstressed /i/, particularly when it occurred adjacent to /r/ (see CGMEMG vol. 1, 63–4); such an environment is especially prone to syncope, as attested by the fact that the few possible cases of syncope in Ancient Greek largely affected unaccented high vowels in the neighbourhood of liquids (e.g. Homeric ἤλυθον > classical ἦλθον, see Szemerényi 1964, 272). The post-classical syncope of the unstressed /i/ is already attested in later Hellenistic papyri (Gignac 1976, 306–7): interesting, in this regard, are the spellings ἀρθμητικοῦ for ἀριθμητικοῦ in P.Mich. 5.273.7 (= TM 12109) [Tebtynis, 46 CE] and ἀρθμήσ[εως] for ἀρ<ι>θμήσεως in P.Münch. 3.114 (= TM 21448) [origin unknown, 201/202 CE], suggesting that syncope could affect the lexical family of ἀριθμός (although the possibility of a spelling error may not be excluded). Conversely, the almost inevitable confusion between ἀρθμός and the lectio facilior ἀριθμός regularly arose in textual transmission (cf. B.1, C.1, C.2, C.3, C.5). An alternative possibility that cannot be discounted is that the potential occurrence of syncope may have caused some speakers to understand ἀρθμός as a syncopated variant of ἀριθμός: the grammarians’ explanations quoted above demonstrate that a semantic link could be traced between the two words.

E. Byzantine and Modern Greek commentary

While ἀριθμός survives in Medieval and Modern Greek (see ILNE and LKN s.v.) with a range of meanings comparable to that of English number, the rare ἀρθμός was lost at an early stage: after late antiquity, it and its derivatives, including ἄρθμιοςἄρθμιος and ἀρθμέωἀρθμέω, survive only in erudite sources, such as Eustathius and the Etymologica. No variant ἀρθμός with the meaning ‘number’ is attested for this period, implying that if such a form ever existed (either as a product of syncope or as a reinterpretation of ἀρθμός (‘bond’)), it did not survive.

F. Commentary on individual texts and occurrences

(1)    Call. fr. 497a Pfeiffer = Erot. fr. 64 (C.4)

This fragment of Callimachus is transmitted in the 1st-century-CE Hippocratic lexicon of Erotianus (B.1) to exemplify the meaning of ἀρθμός in an explanation of the term ξυναρθμοῦται (‘is conjoined’). The hendiadys ἀρθμὸν […] καὶ φιλίαν (‘a bond of friendship’) is rooted in the literary tradition: the family ἀρθμός, ἄρθμιοςἄρθμιος, ἀρθμέωἀρθμέω is ‘always employed in the formulaic language of Homer, and in later literature through the classical period, with or in the sense of φίλος or φιλότης’ (Schein 1985, 28). Notably, all three occurrences of the stem (-)αρθμ- were altered to the lectio facilior (-)αριθμ- in the text’s transmission. Comparing the text transmitted by P.Oxy. 2213 (= TM 59392) [100–175 CE] with Erotianus’ testimony, Pfeiffer (1949–1953 vol. 1, 89) first reconstructed this verse as l. 19 of his fr. 80 of Callimachus, with the text ἀμφοτέροι⸥ν ἀρ|⸤θμὸν καὶ φιλίη⸥ν ἔταμες. Following Barber and Maas (1950) , who conjoined fr. 82.1–3 with fr. 80.19–21, Pfeiffer (1949–1953 vol. 2, 113–4 and 122) later printed fr. 80–82.19 as βουκτ]α̣σ̣[ι]ῶ̣ν ἀρ[τὺν πιστο]τ̣έρη|ν ἔταμες, and the line quoted by Erotianus as fr. 497a, although with the 2nd sg. ἔταμες in place of the transmitted ἔταμον.