From: dalmatia@eburg.com
Date: Fri Aug 28 1998 - 10:38:55 EDT
Micheal Palmer wrote:
>
> At 12:24 PM -0000 8/27/98, Adam, Professor AKM wrote:
> >Colleagues,
> >
> >Doesn't the problem arise from our having a technical definition for
> >"hurricane" that would have been inaccessible & irrelevant to our Greek
> >sources?
>
> Yes. I suspect strongly that this explains the broad use of LAILAPS in
> ancient Greek (Classical and Hellenistic), but it still seems a bit strange
> that LAILAPS would take on the specific meaning 'hurricane' in modern
> Greek. Do we have any modern Greek speakers on the list who would care to
> comment. Is the term really as specific as my dictionary claims?
Modern accounts of sailing the Mediterrnaean by provate sailing folks
tell of the difficulty of getting enough wind to use their sails, and
when the wind does come, of its being too strong to use much sail.
The storms there are vicious, and pure sailing vessels [with no
motors] require great skill and patience to make their passages. [see
Lin and Larry Pardey's books on Serrafin's passages in this area.]
Lying ahull to anchor drogues is often about all that can be done in
those storms. This is why the modern vessels, like the ancient, are
best designed for mechanical propulsion as well as sail. [Motors now,
oars then.]
As a guess, I would bet that LAILAPS simply means one of these
extreemly vicious storms, the worst that that body of water has to
offer, and thereby would take on the meaning of hurricane when it was
discovered to be another 'worst' storm type.
George
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