[Used] diminutively.[1] A small wine-jar.[2] Like
poli/xnh ["small town"].[3] But in
Aristophanes piqa/knai [are] deserted places; for because of the war those [who had been evacuated] out of the countryside were living in caves.[4] But the ancients say
fida/knh.[5]
*piqa/knh: u(pokoristikw=s. mikro\s pi/qos. w(s poli/xnh. para\ de\ *)aristofa/nei piqa/knai, oi( e)/rhmoi to/poi: dia\ ga\r to\n po/lemon sphlai/ois w)/|koun oi( e)k tw=n a)grw=n. oi( de\ palaioi\ fida/knhn le/gousi.
[1] From a scholion on
Aristophanes,
Plutus [
Wealth] 546. See further below, n. 3.
[2] That is, a (relatively) small version of a type of large jar (cf.
pi 1585). Same or similar gloss in other lexica; references at
Photius pi875 Theodoridis.
[3] Again from a scholion on
Aristophanes,
Plutus [
Wealth] 546, where the genitive singular of either the present headword or its Attic equivalent
fida/xnh (below, at n. 5) -- editors vary in which they print -- occurs. The comparandum
poli/xnh is a diminutive of
po/lis, and as a proper noun, the name of several small cities (see LSJ s.v.).
[4] From a scholion on
Aristophanes,
Knights 792, where the sausage-seller refers to the personified Demos as 'living for the eighth year in the casklets and crannies and mini-towers'. The calculation dates from the "Periclean" evacuation of Attica in 432 BCE: see the famous account in
Thucydides 2.14-17, esp. 2.17.1 & 4 on this makeshift accommodation.
[5] Also in
Photius (above); cf.
Moeris (who calls it a large
pithos) and
Hesychius (who says it is small and narrow).
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