Ancient Toponym of the Week: Diarroia
No, really: http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/376769/diarroia.
It so happens that our reference is in Google Books: Purcaro Pagano 1976, 334. Pagano finds this name in a sailing itinerary and places it on the Syrtis Maior, the ancient Gulf of Sidra. Have we propagated the mistake of a traveler's annotated misfortune taken for an ancient place or is this a true toponym used by ancient people to label a particularly infamous port of call?
Comments
Re: Ancient Toponym of the Week: Diarroia
Author: Leifuss
It's the real deal I'm afraid :-S
I came across it a while back as Ptolemy mentions it as well. Diarrhoia means 'flow through', so perhaps it has/d a stream running through it? Pretty handy in the Gulf of Sidra, I'd imagine...
Re: Ancient Toponym of the Week: Diarroia
Author: Sean
Thanks for the comment, Leif. That's a rather mundane origin for the name; I wonder why we don't see more occurrences.
Looks like we should add a Ptolemy reference for this resource.
Re: Ancient Toponym of the Week: Diarroia
Author: Sean
I discovered today that the Barrington compilers made a separate entry for Ptolemy's "Diarroia", and we've published that one at http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/376770. Reconciling these possible duplicates is one of the goals of Pleiades.