Occasionally [used] instead of [he/she/it] will rob a temple. For they say korei=n ["to sweep"] [when they mean] to beautify, to sweep clean, and to sweep out. And e)kkorhqei/hs ["may you be swept out"] is said for e)kkalunqei/hs.[1]
Neôkorêsei: eniote anti tou hierosulêsei. korein gar legousi to kallunein, to saroun, kai ekkallunein. to te ekkorêtheiês anti tou ekkaluntheiês.
This entire entry appears in
Timaeus'
Platonic Lexicon, and is also in
Photius (nu137 Theodoridis, out of alphabetical order); it glosses
Plato,
Republic 9.574D (web address 1).
[2] The original meaning of the noun
new-ko/ros "temple warden" was indeed probably "temple-sweeper". Admittedly
nu 228 distances itself from that explanation ("one who beautifies the temple, but not one who sweeps it", but that reflects only the semantic drift the word would have undergone, to "sacristan, warden". See LSJ s.v.
newko/ros.
Plato (above) is using the cognate verb ironically, "sweeping the temple clean" meaning to rob it clean, apparently as an overliteral reading of
newkore/w; the
scholia ad loc. agree with that interpretation.
[1] In
Menander: see already
epsilon 537 (and
kappa 2079).
No. of records found: 1
Page 1