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Headword: Tetraeliktos
Adler number: tau,390
Translated headword: four-coiled
Vetting Status: high
Translation:
[Meaning] much-coiled. "A four-coiled serpent deprived you of your young."
Greek Original:
Tetraeliktos: polueliktos. nosphisen ôdinôn tetraeliktos ophis.
Note:
Greek Anthology 7.210.4 (Antipater of Sidon), addressed to a swallow whose nestlings were eaten by a snake; quoted more fully at alpha 687; cf. Gow and Page, vol. I (32), vol. II (84), and further extracts from this epigram at epsilon 3246, eta 251, eta 525, and kappa 1654 (see n.1 thereto for an English translation of the complete epigram). Gow and Page suggest (ibid.) that the number of coils signaled by the headword ('four-coiled') relates not so much to the snake in repose -- as might be typically presumed -- but to the serpent in motion and characteristic of its trail; four loops in its track indicate an unusually large snake.
References:
A.S.F. Gow and D.L. Page, eds., The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams, vol. I, (Cambridge 1965)
A.S.F. Gow and D.L. Page, eds., The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams, vol. II, (Cambridge 1965)
Keywords: definition; medicine; poetry; zoology
Translated by: Catharine Roth on 21 December 2013@01:14:45.
Vetted by:
David Whitehead (tweaking) on 22 December 2013@03:55:26.
Ronald Allen (expanded principal note, added bibliography, added cross-references) on 21 January 2019@22:50:21.
Ronald Allen (further expanded principal note) on 30 January 2019@23:29:15.

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