Note 25 — Second Part.

Perhaps the word was σαπερδίς, which in Aristotle, Hist. Anim. VIII. 30., signifies a certain fish, for in Athenaeus, Deipnos. p. 591., σαπέρδιον (the diminutive) is the nick-name of a hetaera, and when Diogenes (Diogenes Laertius, VI. 2. 6.) made a scholar wear a σαπέρδης, the latter threw it away (ὑπ’ αἰδοῦς ῥίψας), (having cast it from him in disgust). Note at the same time that the word Sarapis also occurs in Plautus (Paenulus V. 5. 30 sqq.), where Anthemonides says:

(Thou mannikin, go to and be crucified! Dost dare to play the lover here, thou Tom Thumb of a man? or to meddle with what male men love? Skinned sprat, Sarapis of the corn-crops, sheepskin, common salt of the market; and yet reeking worse of garlic and leek than Roman bargees!). To restore this undoubtedly corrupt text is beyond our powers, but this much at any rate results from the passage as a whole that Sarapis or Sarrapis here too signifies a vicious man. Anthemonides certainly takes Hanno, to whom this speech is addressed, for a cinaedus, for he says later on: “nam te cinaedum esse arbitror magis quam virum” (but I reckon you to be a cinaedus rather than a man), and he had previously said: “Quis hic homo est cum tunicis longis, quasi puer cauponius?” (Who is this fellow with the long tunics, like a waiter at a cookshop?) and “Sane genus hoc muliebrosum est tunicis demissitiis.” (Surely this is a womanish sort, with his trailing tunics). Similarly Turnebus, Adversar. bk. X. ch. 24., mentions the fact that Hesychius explains σάραπις by περσικὸς χιτὼν (a Persian tunic). However he prefers to read, instead of Sarrapis, arra pisa ementium, (pledge of such as buy at the price of one pea) in reference to the vice of Bacchus, “obscoenum et mollem virum, qui pro arra dari possit vilis mercimonii.” (a foul and deboshed man, fit only to be given as pledge at the value of any cheap commodity).