Lessus

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Lessus comes from Latin and means something like to sing a loud wail.

In the form used by Cicero , one can assume that it was used in a derogatory way for loud and overdramatized wailing . Here, following the Twelve Tables Laws, the use of mourners at burials should be curbed; So it was a form of luxury criticism in antiquity.

The term Lessus was included in German dictionaries, for example in the Oeconomische Encyclopädie (since 1773) by Johann Georg Krünitz .

Hapax legomenon

Lessus is regarded as Hapax legomenon , a word that appears only once in Latin literature, namely in Cicero. In the Tusculanae disputationes 2,55, lessus is also said to occur, which is also referred to in dictionaries, but there is another word in the original wording in the corresponding place and the word lessus is only used in later (print) editions , partly in Form of a commentary on fletus . Other passages in which lessus is supposed to appear, such as the Twelve Tables Laws and the Laws of Solon, are unknown in their original wording; their wording was reconstructed from later sources, including the passage in Cicero. The fact that the word should actually have appeared there is doubted by reference to Cicero's motives that led to the text of De legibus , 2.59.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b Cicero, De legibus , 2.59.
  2. ^ Marie Theres Fögen : The song of the law (extended version of a lecture on March 14, 2006). Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung , Munich 2007. In the series: THEMES - Publications of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung , Volume 87. ISBN 978-3-938593-07-5 , corrected ISBN 978-3-938593-07-3 . Pp. 62-66.
  3. ↑ Fögen: Law , p. 64 with source citations up to an edition by Beroaldus in 1496.
  4. ^ Fögen: Law , pp. 62–63.
  5. ↑ Fögen: Law , pp. 65–68.

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