« The treacle well: Saturday's food quotation | Main | Uses for Algerian wine: Sunday's quotation »

Sunday 20 November 2005

Food words in ancient languages: Dacian

I intended to add to Food in the Ancient World from A to Z the names of foods in other ancient languages -- beyond Latin and Greek -- but I had to give up the idea because it would have taken much too long to get them right. I will gradually add further information to this site.

I've seen discussion on the language forums YourDictionary.com and Alphadictionary.com about the names of two great kings of Dacia (roughly, modern Romania) before the Roman conquest: Decebalus and Burebista. This reminded me that the structure of these four-syllable names, especially Burebista, is reminiscent of some of the words for edible and medicinal plants in Dacian, as preserved by the Greek pharmaceutical author Dioskourides and in the Latin Herbarius attributed to Apuleius.

Extinct for nearly two thousand years, Dacian makes only rare appearances on the Web. So I've extracted the fifty-four recorded Dacian plant names from my database: they can now be found listed here.

Contributed by Andrew Dalby. Posted at 24:21
Categories: Extra (additions to published work), Words