Etymology
From obiciō (“to throw or put before or towards”).
Pronunciation
In Classical Latin, the forms of this word built on the oblique stem obic- may have originally been pronounced with an unwritten /j/ sound, making the first syllable of the word /ob/ (which contains the short vowel /o/ and scans as a heavy syllable because of the coda consonant /b/). For example, in Attic Nights 4.17, Aulus Gellius indicates that the learned grammarian Sulpicius Apollinaris read obicibus with a short o and a doubled ("gemina") letter i where it occurs in Vergil's Georgics with heavy-light-light-heavy scansion; this implies a pronunciation /ob.ji.ki.bus/. The same situation of a single letter I potentially representing a sequence of the consonant /j/ and short vowel /i/ is found with the verb obiciō and a number of other prefixed verbs derived from iaciō.
Gellius criticizes as ignorant those who pronounce obiciēbat and subices with long vowels (i.e. /oː/ and /uː/) for the sake of the meter, a comment which implies that pronunciations with /ob.ji/ and /sub.ji/ were not universally used for derivatives of iacio during the second century, and may have been simplified in normal speech to /o.bi/ and /su.bi/ for many speakers of that time.
There is less evidence about the Classical Latin pronunciation of the nominative singular form obex as the word was rarely used in this form. It appears scanned as ōbex in the late poets Sidonius Apollinaris and Avitus of Vienne, who may have had in mind the pronunciation that Gellius proscribes.
Noun
ō̆bex m or f (genitive ō̆bicis); third declension
- (literal) a bolt, bar; a barrier, wall
c. 37 BCE – 30 BCE,
Virgil,
Georgics 2.1:
- unde tremor terris, qua vi maria alta tumescant
obicibus ruptis rursus que in se ipsa residant
c. 430 CE – c. 489 CE,
Sidonius Apollinaris,
carmina 2.492:
- proferat hic veterum thalamos discrimine partos
Graecia, ni pudor est: reparatis Pisa quadrigis
suscitet Oenomaum, natae quem fraude cadentem
cerea destituit resolutis axibus obex- 1936 translation by W. B. Anderson
- Here let Greece bring forward, unless she be ashamed, those marriages of her ancients which were won by peril. Let Pisa bring back her four-horse chariot and revive Oenomaus, who fell by a daughter’s guile, when the waxen linch-pins betrayed him, unloosing the axles
c. 490 CE – 517 CE, Avitus Viennensis,
Poematum de Mosaicae historiae gestis 1.281:
[1]- Fit fluvius pereunte lacu: tum redditur alveo
Pristina riparum conclusis fluctibus obex,
Donec dividuum spargens per devia finem
Gurgite septeno patulum percurrat in aequor.- 1997 translation by George W. Shea
- As the lake it formed disappears, it becomes once more a river. Then the ancient barrier of its banks is restored to its channel, and its waves are confined, until finally its divided mouth is scattered over distant wastes as it runs in seven streams to the open sea.
- (transferred sense) a hindrance, impediment, obstacle
c. 48 BCE,
Julius Caesar,
Commentarii de Bello Civili 3.54:
- [...], et quique intermissis diebus alteram noctem subnubilam nactus obstructis omnibus castrorum portis et ad impediendum obicibus obiectis tertia inita vigilia silentio exercitum eduxit et se in antiquas munitiones recipit.
- [...], five days after, he (Pompey) found another dark and cloudy night where, the camp's entrances walled up and, to make their forcing even harder, obstacles having been laid, he led stealthly his host out at the third watch (around midnight) and made back to his previous defense works.
References
Shea, George W. (1997) The poems of Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus, page 78
Further reading
- “obex”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- “obex”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
- obex in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
- “obex”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
- “obex”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin
