['Lookout'] and 'relying/trusting' and 'inquiries'. All these [terms are] recondite [and occur] in
Thucydides. But he uses [the term] 'lookout' for concern and consideration, not for the place, as [does]
Homer.[1]
But
Agathias too uses it for a viewing-point: Narses "sat in some room on an upper floor, in a lookout over the plain."[2] That is, in a viewing-point.
And Simocatus [writes]: "and so they dash toward the heights and look around from some great lookout, and the enemy is nowhere to be seen."[3]
Periôpê kai Pisunoi kai Pusteis. panta tauta glôttôdê para Thoukudidêi. kalei de periôpên tên phrontida kai tên periskepsin, ou ton topon, hôs Homêros. kai Agathias de tên periskepsin legei: ho de Narsês hêsto es huperôion ti dômation, en periôpêi tou pediou. toutestin en periskepsei. kai Simokatos: kai oun aittousi pros ta hupsêla kai periskopousin ek tinos megistês periôpês, kai to polemion aphanes.
For the primary headword see already
pi 1233.
[1] = Aelius
Dionysius pi41,
Photius pi804 Theodoridis, and cf. the
scholia to
Thucydides 4.87.1.
Thucydides uses the word
periwph/ only in that passage, and does so in the idiosyncratic sense indicated here. He uses the masculine nominative plurals
pi/sunoi three times (2.89.6, 5.14.3, 6.2.6) and
pu/steis once (1.5.2). The lexicographers' point seems to be that
Thucydides could have chosen more everyday synonyms for all these; the latter two, in particular, are rarely used in prose. The adjective applied to them here,
glwttw/dh, is elsewhere only applied to people, and in the pejorative sense of loudmouthed/talkative/verbose (most of its attestations are in commentary to a number of instances of it in the
Septuagint, e.g.
Proverbs 21:19,
Ecclesiastes 8:3,
Psalm 139:12); however, that sense is inappropriate here, and 'recondite' is Stephen Usher's translation of the term
glwsshmatika/ in the passage of
Dionysius of Halicarnassus'
Second Letter to Ammaeus (3) where he anticipates the lexicographers' point and gives the present headword as one of four examples.
[2]
Agathias,
Histories 1.21.4 (37.23 Keydell), on the Byzantine general Narses (cf.
nu 42) moments before the Battle of
Ariminum (modern-day Rimini, cf.
alpha 3884) in 553 CE; cf. Frendo (29). The word translated here as 'viewpoint' (
peri/skeyis) is the same word translated as 'consideration' in the previous paragraph, where the term is used in an abstract sense and explicitly
not in reference to a physical location. Clearly in the
Agathias quotation the term refers concretely to an actual viewing-point, but this distinction seems to have escaped whoever added this quotation. On the Gothic War (535-554) battle itself, see also
alpha 202,
epsilon 3550, and
pi 110.
[3] Theophylact Simocatta,
Histories 2.5.11.
J.D. Frendo, trans., Agathias: The Histories, (Berlin 1975)
Catharine Roth (set status) on 8 October 2011@11:43:19.
David Whitehead (another keyword; tweaks and cosmetics) on 9 October 2011@04:25:55.
David Whitehead (tweaked tr; expanded n.1; another keyword) on 26 September 2013@06:30:32.
Catharine Roth (coding) on 11 July 2015@16:43:01.
David Whitehead (coding) on 23 May 2016@03:21:55.
Ronald Allen (augmented n.2, added bibliography, added cross-references) on 19 November 2023@11:25:19.
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