Kitap 7
100
There is the polypus, declined πολύπους, πολύποδος; at least this is the way the Attic writers use the word, and so does Homer:— As when a polypus (πουλύποδος in the genitive) is dragged from out his lair: keeping the analogy to the noun ποὺς, from which it is de- rived. But in the accusative case we find the form πολύπουν, just as we Ἀλκίνουν and οἰδίπουν. Aeschylus, too, has the form τρίπουν, as an epithet of a caldron, in his Athamas, from ποὺς, as if it were a simple noun like νοῦς. But the form πώλυπος is Aeolic. For the Attics always say πολύπους. Aristophanes, in his Dædalus, says— When then I had this polypus (πουλύπους) and cuttle-fish. And in another place he says— He put before me a polypus (πουλύπουν). And in another place he has— They are the blows of a polypus press'd tight. And Alcæus says, in his Adulterous Sisters,— The man's a fool and has the mind of a polypus (πουλύποδος). But Ameipsias, in his Glutton, says— I want, it seems, a heap of polypi (πουλύπων). And Plato, in his Boy, writes— First of all you like the polypodes (τοὺς πουλύποδας). Alcæus in another passage says— I myself eat like any polypus (πουλύπους). But others use the accusative case πολύποδα, in strict analogy with ποὺς, ποδὸς, ποδὶ, πόδα. Eupolis, in his Demi, has— The man's a fellow-citizen of mine, A very polypus in disposition.
