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Hello,
I'm a long time listener who's turned my mom, my girlfriend, etcetera onto the show. I've lifeguarded the last six years in North County and the only thing to do to stay sane is listen to music, lectures, and occasionally the radio. You guys are what I looked forward to every sunday in those times of hardship . . . lazy days de l'Ennui, the agony of not knowing why getting paid for doing nothing isn't very fun.
Anyways.
I was reading Ovid's The Art of Love and Other Poems and I don't read latin but the edition I was reading from had the latin on the left page and the english on the right, so I would skim/read over the latin to see how much of it I could naturally translate. During this time I came across 'Haec habet' ut dicas 'quicquid in orbe fuit.' and it was when he was talking about the beautiful roman girls and their effects on you, as the verse translated in my edition: 'Here,' you will say, 'is all the world's beauty/all the beauty of the world.'
My question is concerning the wold orbe for world/earth. I did some research but I couldn't find the greek stem or any other origin of orbe. I'm curious to know, I guess first of all: Was orbe a common word used by common people for earth/world? I've understand: orbis terrarum = the world, the Earth. orbis = circle, orb.
If so, when did it become common? When did the earth-world (with a related meaning of being spherical) enter into common language? Which definition did the root of orbe come from: sphere or earth-world? Is this relationship the same for the greek words for earth and sphere? When did the spherical shape of the earth become accepted commonly? (perhaps not a lexicographic question, but I think related)
I know Pythagorus, 600 years before Ovid, taught that the earth was round, but only from an aesthetic point of view. Some say Homer vaguely hints at it even before him. Then Plato and Aristotle taught the same 400-300 years before him. But according to my trusty wikipedia entry on the spherical earth, it seems it was still being argued and seen as a radical idea, even up until Seleucus of Seleucia (190 bc) and seems to have become commonly known with Ptolemy (90-168 ad), which is after Ovid.
Thoughts?
Welcome.
Great question. Here's an interesting academic treatment online, written by Dr. Michael Weiss, Cornell University, Department of Linguistics.
Orbis
Weiss attributes the word to roots related to turning, and shows earliest uses in Latin refer to flat, circular disks. So it may be difficult to relate the use of this word to an understanding of a spherical globe.
[edit]
Maybe of particular interest in the linked document is page two. There are a couple of references where the Latin word orbis is explicitly contrasted with globus (sphere) underscoring that orbis means a flat disk. One of these references is explicitly discussing the movement of heavenly bodies, but the spheres in question in this discussion are not the planets and stars themselves, but rather theoretical nested spheres to which the planets and stars are affixed. The spheres move relative to each other, and the bodies move only as part of the movement of the sphere on which they reside.
The "music of the spheres" is not a reference to spherical heavenly bodies, but of the movements of these nine nested spheres that they hypothesized made up the universe.
As a result, the use of orbis for planets and stars counterintuitively points us away from the notion that they perceived these planets to be spheres, and toward the idea that they viewed the planets as disks.
wow. that's an amazing essay of exactly what I was looking for. I didn't expect that. It's really interesting, that orbis meaning sphere is a rarity.
"And the well-known collocation orbis terrarum occurs for the first time in a
fragment of P. Rutilius Rufus, the consul of 105 BCE.10 It rarely refers to a sphere,
never to my knowledge in Republican Latin, and in fact is explicitly contrasted
with the word globus ‘sphere' by Cicero (N. D. 2.47): 3)
cumque duae formae praestantes sint, ex solidis globus ( sic enim sfa›ran
intepretari placet) ex planis autem circulus aut orbis qui kÊklow Graece
dicitur.
There are two forms that excel all others, among solid bodies the globe
(for so we may translate Greek sphaeran) and among plane figures the
round or circle, the Greek kyklos.
[Translation H. Rackham, Loeb Edition]
Cicero Rep. 6.17 (= Somnium Scipionis, Scipio Africanus the elder speaking about
the celestial spheres):
4) novem tibi orbibus vel potius globis conexa sunt omnia
These are the nine circles, or rather spheres, by which the whole is joined.
[Translation Clinton Walker Keyes, Loeb Edition]"
thank you a ton.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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