murmillo

Pronunciation

• Classical: [mʊrˈmɪl.loː]^[1]
• Ecclesiastical: [murˈmil.lo]^[1]

Forms

murmillō m (genitive murmillōnis); third declension^[1] Inscriptions mostly have murm-, the manuscripts more often myrmillō, and later writers such as Aurelius Victor and Ammianus mirmillō.^[2][3] Wiktionary takes mirmillō as its main form.^[1]

Etymology

It is apparently borrowed from Ancient Greek μορμύρος (mormúros, “a kind of sea fish”), or the related μορμύλος (mormúlos),^[4][2][5] the gladiator being named after the image of a fish on his helmet, as the scholia on Juvenal explain.^[2][5] Köbler starts from the Greek μουρμίλλων (mourmíllōn) and notes that the further origin is unexplained.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler and the TLL record it first in Cicero,^[6][2] who mocks Lucius Antonius as having become “a general out of a murmillo, a commander out of a gladiator” (ex murmillone dux, ex gladiatore imperator).^[2][5]

Semantic evolution

The word names one type of gladiator, armed in the Gallic manner, with a fish on the crest of his helmet, who usually fought the net-fighter (rētiārius) or the Thracian.^[4][5][3] The epitome of Festus reports the song sung by the net-fighter against him, non te peto, piscem peto; quid me fugis, Galle? (“it's not you I'm after, it's the fish; why do you run from me, Gaul?”), and explains that the murmillo's armour was Gallic and that such fighters were formerly called Galli.^[5][2] The TLL notes that the writers use it with contempt, as of the lowest kind of job.^[2] Seneca, Quintilian, Suetonius and Ammianus use it,^[5][3] and it appears in inscriptions.^[2][3]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it in the Philippics to mock Lucius Antonius.^[2][5][6]
• 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca uses it in De providentia.^[3][5][6]
• c. 75–c. 150 AD – Suetonius uses it in the lives of Caligula and Nero.^[3][6]
• c. 390 AD – Ammianus Marcellinus has the spelling mirmillō.^[3][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A murmillo, a gladiator with Gallic armour and a fish on his helmet, usually matched against a rētiārius or a Thracian.^[4][5][3]

Word family

• murmillōnicus

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
4. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de