194 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2°<i S. No 114., Mar. 6. '58. 



serve Venice, and he might naturally conclude 

 that his profession that he was a Venetian born 

 would assist him. Was there any equivalent 

 motive for falsification in his statement to R. 

 Eden ? For if not, we must prefer the latter. 



Samu£l Lucas. 



TENTH WAVE, THE PYTHAGOREAN NUMBERS, AND 

 THE ETYMOLOGY OF " TEN," ^vplos, ETC. 



(2"<1 S. V. 108.) 



O. H. wishes to know " the natural phenome- 

 non " which originated the phrase " tenth wave," 

 as used by Ovid and Burke. No natural pheno- 

 menon had anything to do with it. We constantly 

 say " ten to one," and use the word " decimate " 

 like " ten times worse," conveying the meaning of 

 "large odds," great slaughter, and considerable 

 aggravation. No doubt that decimce or tithes have 

 always been involved in the last category. 



Doubtless the number Ten originally indicated 

 amongst all tribes or races that which was im- 

 mense or innumerable — ten being the utmost 

 number they could express by their fingers — the 

 primitive arithmetic. 



This is all that can be said in explanation of the 

 exaggerating idea involved in Ten by the Latins. 

 It is a primitive notion retained to the last in the 

 language — not apparent in the Greek — and seem- 

 ing to show, with other internal evidence, that the 

 Latin was a distinct ofi'set from the Sanscrit, and 

 probably an older dialect than the Greek. This 

 opinion is forcibly upheld by Maury : " ce sont 

 simplement deux sceurs, et si Ton devait leur as- 

 signor un age diflferent, la langue latine aurait 

 des droits a etre regardee comme I'ainee." (ia 

 Terre et VHomme, p. 490., and in his excellent 

 paper in the Indigenous Races of the Earth, 

 p. 38.). 



Explanations have been given — more curious 

 than satisfactory. Thus Festus says : " nam et 

 ovum decimum majus nascitur, et fluctus decimus 

 fieri maximus dicitur;" for which there is no 

 authority whatever. But the word was also used 

 in a depreciating sense ; thus Verrius Flaccus : 

 " Quia vero decimando colligebatur, id caeteris 

 villus erat ; hinc etiam decumanum frumentum 

 dixere pro aceroso, ac oleum decumanum pro 

 minus puro ac prolnde viliori." 



Certain it is, however, that the words decern^ 

 decies, decumanus, were used by the Latins as epi- 

 thets equivalent to considerable, large, immense. 

 Cicero (De Fin. ii. 8.) quotes Lucilius for the 

 phrase acipensere cum decumano, where decuma- 

 nus, tenth, can only mean huge, immense; iu fact, 

 a huge sturgeon, if the sturgeon was the acipenser 

 of the Roman gluttons. Decima was the name 

 of one of the Parcse or Fates of their mythology ; 

 and Festus says, " decumam ova dicuntur et >\.qc\x- 



muni fluctus, quia sunt magna " (s. h. v.) There 

 were but four gates to the Roman camp, but the 

 chief was nevertheless c&lled Forta. decuniana; and 

 there were stationed the tenth cohorts of the Le- 

 gions, — facts still farther proving the metonomic 

 significance of the word. In fact, all these words 

 were used by metonomy, Jinitum pro injinito (as we 

 say in Rhetoric) for indefinite, large, immense, innu- 

 merable. Thus, Horace — " decern vitiis instruc- 

 tior," — and Plautus — "si decern habeas linguas 

 mutum esse adducet," — which is equivalent to " as 

 deaf as a post," iu the sense applied to "those 

 who can and loorit hear." Finally, we say, " Bet- 

 ter ten guilty escape than one innocent man sufier ;" 

 and the Italians used the proverb long before it 

 became a maxim in our jurisprudence, to be ques- 

 tioned by Paley, and upheld by a Blackstone and 

 a Romilly. " Meglio e liberar died rei che con- 

 dannar un innocente." Of course, here ten means 

 any number whatever. 



The Greeks used the word (ivpios — as we use 

 myriad — in the same sense, for the immense and 

 innumerable. Dr. Maltby (Oradus) gives a note 

 on the subject : — " The word is derived from 

 ixvpa, largiter fluo, and is well applied to the flow 

 and succession of numbers. The plural was pro- 

 bably not applied to the definite number 10,000, 

 until after the time of Homer ; and later Gram- 

 marians make this distinction in accent ; fivpioi, 

 an immense number ; ixvpioi, 10,000. See Damm. 

 But mbr and moran signify in Gaelic great and a 

 great number or quantity. (Stewart, Gae?.(j?-amm., 

 quoted by Dr. Pott, Etymol). There may be a 

 tracing of the word nvpios to the Sanscrit Ihuri, 

 much, many : the letters m and h being commut- 

 able articulations; the latter being pronounced 

 by merely separating the lips after pronouncing m. 



It is certain that the Zend m sometimes^ re- 

 places the Sansc. b, e.g. Sansc. hru, to speak, is in 

 Zend mru; and mraud, he spoke, is in Sansc. 

 abraoit (abrot). Bopp, i. 91. The derivation 

 quoted by Dr. Maltby is, of course, a mere fancy 

 in accordance with imaginative philology — fivpios, 

 from fjivpca, largiter fluo ! It is nevertheless adopted 

 by Dr. Donaldson in his New Cratylus, and the 

 learned Doctor dismisses the difiiculty with the 

 following astounding observation : " The deriva- 

 tion of the idea of a large number from the sight 

 of water falling in infinite drops, is_ too obvious to 

 require any remark" (.'), p. 273., edit. 1850. Let 

 us try another solution, — perhaps not " too ob- 

 vious," but certainly safer, according to the rules 

 of etymological investigation. 



The Sanscrit bahu, much (contracted into hhu 

 in its derivatives bhu-j&s, bhu-yishtha, bhu-man, 

 bhu-ri), represents the root fiv in fxvpios ; and the 

 word is at once formed, — the length of the v in fiv 

 being equivalent to the omitted aspirate h in bhu, 

 and the b being changed to m, in accordance with 

 the usual change iu the cognate idioms. Nay, it 



