caduceus

Forms

cādūceus m (genitive cādūceī); second declension^[1] The OLD and Lewis & Short head it as the neuter cādūceum; the neuter is certain in Gellius and Apuleius, the masculine in Varro, and elsewhere the gender cannot be told.^[2][3][4] The grammarian Caper prescribes cādūceus, not cādūceum.^[4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek καρύκειον (karúkeion, “herald's staff”), the Doric form of κηρύκειον (kērúkeion), with ⟨d⟩ in place of ⟨r⟩.^[2][3][5][6] Lewis & Short give the form as Aeolic καρύκιον (karúkion).^[3] The Greek word is made from κῆρυξ (kêrux, “herald”),^[5][7] which Etymonline calls probably a Pre-Greek word;^[5] Köbler compares the root Proto-Indo-European *kar- (“to praise”).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Varro, in a book on the life of the Roman people quoted by Nonius, calls it pācis signum, a sign of peace.^[4][3][2]

Semantic evolution

It was the staff that heralds carried as a token of a peaceful embassy.^[2][3] Cicero speaks of a man who could walk unharmed among the weapons of the enemy, protected less by a herald's staff than by the name of orator;^[4][3] Nepos and Livy have envoys sent with one;^[3] and Gellius tells that the Roman people sent the Carthaginians a spear and a cādūceum, signs of war and of peace.^[4] Lewis & Short describe it as at first an olive staff with garlands, which were later shaped into serpents.^[3] Pliny the Elder asks why foreign peoples surrounded it with figures of snakes as a token of peace, and Hyginus says that some make it with two serpents twined round the rod.^[4]

It was also the staff of Mercury, the messenger of the gods, or a picture of it:^[2][3] in Petronius, ipse Trimalchiō capillātus cādūceum tenēbat, “Trimalchio himself, long-haired, was holding a caduceus”.^[2] Suetonius, Apuleius, Macrobius and Servius use it in this sense.^[2][3] English took caduceus from it in the 1590s.^[5]

Timeline

• 116–27 BC – Varro calls it a sign of peace.^[4][7]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero writes of the herald's staff.^[4][3][7]
• c. 100–24 BC – Nepos has a messenger sent with one.^[3][7]
• 59 BC–17 AD – Livy has envoys carrying it.^[3][7]
• before 66 AD – Petronius uses it of the staff of Mercury.^[2][7]
• c. 165 AD – Gellius uses the neuter.^[2][4][7]
• 1590s – English borrows caduceus.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A herald's staff, carried as a token of peace.^[2][3][8]
2. The staff of Mercury, twined with two serpents; a representation of it.^[2][3][4]

Word family

• cādūceātor
• cādūcifer

Related words

• English caduceus

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
8. ^ Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn