270 ARCH.-EOLOGIA ANATOMICA. 



femur. In this sense, likewise, all the classical anatomists used 

 the word, and in not one case known to me is the head of the 

 femur indicated by it. 



Galen having failed as the authority for this sense, I turned to 

 the epigram in Sextus Empiricus, which will he found in his 

 criticism of the Grammarians (ed. Fabric, 1842, ii. 125). In the 

 "nonsense verse" there quoted the word does occur, but the 

 whole epigram is so obscure that I fail to make out of it any 

 justification for the definition. The verse runs thus :— 



// yap croi Skto-oIo-iv ('tt' ovpecri oitto? epao-T>?9 

 €(f)0iTO, Kal veaTt]i' /aoip aveQi]K€ (jivcriv. 

 ap6p(p ev acnriSoevTi ^e/Si^Kora yvla kuO' oXfxov 

 ^da-a TpoxavT')]puiv axpi irepia-TpecJ^eTai. 

 criiiepSaXea S' virevepQev aXwireKO^ cixpi Soxalm 

 aiocivo<i x«'^^«/octi' a-vvSpofxov ap^ovu]?. 



As trochanter is a part of a ship, I thought it might be worth 

 seeking whether there it meant a runner or an apparatus for 

 turning; and as well as I can make out the rather crabbed 

 passage in Basil's M'aumachia (in Fabric. Bihliuth. Grccc.,y\\\. 140), 

 it seems to be a structure connected with the rudder for turning 

 it ; so also in Zonaras, p. 1750, it is said to be " part of a ship." 

 Hesychius {Lex. 1523) says generally that it is part of the stern 

 hard by the rudder. 



In the third sense, as an instrument of torture, the word is 

 used in the fourth book of Maccabees, viii. 12, and also in Gregory 

 Nazianzen's Encomium on the (so-called) Maccabean family 

 tortured by Antiochus, but I can get no light on the nature of 

 this instrument ; it is mentioned along with the wheel and the 

 rack, so it must have been some other. However, even the 

 editor, IMorelli, was not able to render it into Latin more speci- 

 fically than to call the trochanters " exquisitissima quneque 

 tormenti genera." 



The sum of the matter, then, seems to be that the anatomists 

 are right in calling the knobs which give attachments to the 

 rotating muscles trochanters, and the lexicographers are wrong 

 in supposing that trochanter and /ce0a\;; were ever synonymous. 



A. M. 



