Kenneth KITCHELL Canine Cinaedi and Crabs with Lips: The Role of Changing Greek Pronunciation in Medieval Textual problems in Albertus Magnus

The author of this paper has just finished the long process of translating and annotating for the first time ever the enormous De animalibus of Albertus Magnus, long recognized as a seminal work in the history of science. Among the many surprises contained in the 1,600 page Latin text are some unexpected clues to the pronunciation of Greek as it moved from Aristotle, through Arabic translators, and then to the West in Latin.

Albert received his version of Aristotle's natural works as a Latin translation produced by Michael Scotus of the Arabic translation which had been made of the original Greek. This process alone engendered many errors but the present paper will focus on the sorts of the errors which only explained by the fact that as the Arabic translators had the Greek read aloud to them, "modern" pronunciation of ancient words introduced bizarre errors into the text.

The first example appears at De Animalibus 1.436. Here, in a section on physiognomy, Albert describes a "cynaedum," which, he interprets as a person "canine" in nature. Of course, "cinaedus" does not mean canine, but the difficulty is removed if cynaedum is read with a long upsilon, calling to mind the Modern Greek pronunciation of "kyôn, kynos." Someone (Albertus or his sources) has used his rudimentary Greek to offer an etymology, accidentally making the trait less charged, albeit still insulting.

An even clearer example is found in De Animalibus 7.20. Here, "modern" pronunciation rendered a perfectly intelligible Aristotelian text gibberish, turning crab claws into crab lips. A few other examples will show the pervasiveness of the problem. Albert's "gali," for example, is a "modern" pronunciation of "galê" and as a result he really does not know what the creature is.

The paper will end by showing how Albert felt about his sources (for he was aware of the problem) and will ask if there is a muse who guides the progress of factual materials from antiquity to the present--a muse, as it were, of the classical tradition, for far more information came through correctly than was garbled.