essedarius

Forms

essedārius m (genitive essedāriī or essedārī); second declension^[1] An inscription has the spelling assidarius.^[2]

Etymology

It is from Latin essedum (“war chariot”) + -ārius.^[3][1] The OLD calls essedum Gallic, apparently from Gaulish *ensedon, made of “in” and the root “sit”;^[3] Wiktionary instead derives it from Gaulish asseda and Proto-Celtic *eks-dī-sedo-, with the root of Proto-Indo-European *sed- (“to sit”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first appears in Cicero, in a letter,^[4][5] and in Caesar's Gallic War, of warriors who fight from a war chariot.^[5][3]

Semantic evolution

From the chariot-fighters of Gaul and Britain the name passed to a class of gladiator in the Roman games, found in Petronius, Suetonius and inscriptions.^[3][5] Petronius also uses the feminine essedāria as an adjective, of a woman.^[5]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero mentions essedarii in a letter.^[5][4]
• c. 50 BC – Caesar uses it of warriors fighting from chariots.^[5][4]
• before 66 AD – Petronius uses it of a gladiator.^[5][4]
• c. 75–c. 150 AD – Suetonius uses it of gladiators.^[5][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A warrior who fights from a war chariot.^[3][5]
2. A gladiator who fights from a chariot.^[3][5]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c d e f Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press