Nov. 29. 1851.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



427 



satisfactorily confuting Walpole's arguments ; or 



did lie aim, but unsuccessfully, at the president's 



chair ? J. II. M. 

 Bath. 



COINS or VABALATHCS. 



(Vol. iv., p. 255.) 



There have been many attempts to explain the 

 puzzling vcaiMDR, on the supposition that a Latin 

 sentence was concealed under these letters. Pin- 

 kerton sugf;ested " Voluntate Cwsaris Romani Im- 

 pecatoris Maximi Domini, Rex." I hope to offer a 

 better solution, which, although not new, has been 

 passed over, I believe, by all subsequent writers. 

 The Rev. George North, in the Museum Meadiannin, 

 p. 97., gives the following note : " Apud Arabes 

 accepi verbuin Karama significare Ilonoravit, a 

 quo Ucrima, et Ucrim ; quo sensu respondet hoc 

 Arabicuin Tw Zeffaa-n^ apud Graecos." On applying 

 to a well-known scholar and linguist here, 1 found 

 that from the verb Karama there was derived the 

 adjective Karimat (nobilis), from which again the 

 supeidative Akram comes. There can, I think, be 

 little doubt that the word vcrimdr is originally 

 deriveil from this verb Karamn, and that it is most 

 probably equivalent to Nobilissimus, a title so 

 common shortly afterwards, as applied to the heirs 

 to the empire.* 



The word cpuuIac or cpiac, which appears on 

 the Alexandrian coins of this prince, is of more 

 difficult explanation. Some think it a pragnomen, 

 some a Syriac or other Eastern title, perhaps cor- 

 responding to VCRIMDR. Pellerin thought so. 

 I hope some Oriental scholar will direct his at- 

 tention to this point. These coins are very often 

 ill struck, so that the part of the legend below the 

 head, where the word in, question is found, is in- 

 distinct, for which reason I suppose Mr. Taylor 

 has followed the erroneous reading of Banduri, 

 Epmiac (properly Ppmiac, with lunate epsilon) for 

 CPujiAC, which has been corrected by Eckhel. Of 

 three specimens which I possess, one oidy reads 

 clearly CPx'Ar, J"rom the above-mentioned cause, 

 but it is unquestionably the correct reading on all. 

 The best arrangetnent of the legend, from analogy 

 with those forms used by the Romans, is as 

 follows : 



AT'ro2{«™^.CPUUlAC.OrABAAAAeOC.A®HNOSaijiiu.T«?. 



The existence of coins, of which I possess a spe- 

 cimen also, reading 



A . cpiac . orABAAAAeOC . A0HN . Y . 



■hows that we must not read abhnot .ts one word, 

 but must divide it as above. I tliiidv Mr. Taylor 

 will find his specimen to read as the last-mentioned 



• " NMlhtimuf, in the Byzantine historians, is syno- 

 nymous with Ca;»ar." — Niebtihr. 



coin, the ep (properly eP) being OP, and the AT 

 in like manner AC. My coin gives the whole le'- 

 gend distinctly, and I can vouch for the exactitude 

 of the above legend. 



I believe there appeared soma years ago, in the 

 Revue de Numismatique, an article on the coins of 

 the Zenobian family, but I do not remember when 

 it was published, nor the conclusions to which the 

 writer came. That is, however, the most recent 

 investigation of the subject, and to it I must refer 

 Mr. Taylor, as I have not access to that periodical 

 here. 



Sir Gardner Wilkinson has published in the 

 Numismatic Chronicle, vol. vii. or viii., an inscrip- 

 tion containing the names of Zenobia and Vaba- 

 lathus. After the name of Vabalathus, who has 

 the title of Autocrator, is the word AeHNCioiPor, 

 which justifies the reading A9/,»»^w{ou Tn; on the coins. 

 Vabalathus is thus probably the son of Zenobia 

 by a former husband, Athenoilorus, while bearing 

 himself the same name, as Vabalathus (better Va- 

 ballathus, as on the Alexandrian coins) is said to 

 be equivalent to Athenodorus, Gift of Pallas. 



W. PI. s. 



Ediiiburali. 



marriage of ecclesiastics. 

 (Vol. iv., pp.57. 125. 193. 196. 298.) 



I entirely agree with you that your pages are 

 not a fit battle-ground for theological controversy. 

 Still, since the question of the translation of Heb. 

 xiii. 4. has been mooted, I beg with much deference 

 to suggest that it will not be quite right to let it 

 fall to the ground unsettled, especially since Cephas 

 has thought fit to charge those of our Reformers 

 who translated the Scriptures with mistranslating 

 advisedly, and with propagating new doctrines. 



Cephas's version of the passage is right, and 

 our English version is wrong; but the fault lies in 

 the ignorance of our translators, an ignorance 

 which they shared with all the scholars of their 

 day, and many not bad scholars of our own, of the 

 effect produced on the force of the article by the 

 relation in which it stands to the other words in 

 the clause, in point of order. 6 ti>ios yd/xos is "the 

 honourable marriage;" 6 rlfxios ydiaoi eVri is "the 

 honourable marriage is;" 6 ydfcos rifjuo? is untrans- 

 lateable, uidess you supply iffrl, and then it means 

 " the marriage " (or, marriage in general, in the 

 abstract) " is honourable." But eo-Ta> mioht be 

 supplied, .as it is in Ileb. xiii. 4., when it wiirmean, 

 " let_ marriage be honourable ;" and rlixms & ydixn^ 

 has just the same meaning, with perhaps this dif- 

 ference, that the emphasis falls more distinctly on 

 Ti'/iiuj. The circumstance that the mere assertion 

 that marriage is honourable in all (men or things), 

 true as it is in itself, ill accords with the tenor 

 of the i)assage of which it forms a part, which is 

 hortatory, not assertive, is a good reason why 



