Euraquilo (Hastings' Dictionary)

Euraquilo (ivpaKiXwu) is the read- ing adopted at Ac 27'* by WH and the RV, instead of Euroclydon in the TR and AV, as the name of the wind, which, suddenly descending from the heights of Crete on St. Paul's ship as it was sail- ing closely along the shore, seized it and drove it before the storm, which ended in the shipwreck on Melita. St.

Luke describes the wind as, in character, ' typhonic ' (RV 'tempestuous'), that is, marked by whirlwinds or ' sudden eddying squalls,' as Ramsay calls them, adding that ' every one who has any experience of sailing on lakes or bays overhung by mountains will ap- preciate tlie epithet " typhonic " which Luke uses ' {St. Paul l/te Traveller, p. 326), and by way of greater exactness adds its nautical name, ' which is called ' (4 Ka\ovfi(i>o!)

L'nhappily, the state of the text leaves the precise name doubtful. A summary of the various readings will be found in Sanday, Appendices ad NT, p. 140. The great mass of later testimony yields ' Eurocljdon ' ; the oldest uncials AX have evpaxiXoiy, and this was probably the reading of B*. To B^ appear to be due the superimi)osed T and A which appear in this MS (ETPTAKATAON). B' then either turned A into A, or, if it was done by B-, patched up the letter afresh.

VercelloneCozza in the appendix to their facsimile say ' evpaKvXuv B', evpvKXvSuv B'.' The Vulg. Cassiod. give Eurn-aquiio. Apart from ampler attestation, Euroclydon may claim a pre- ference as the more difficult reading, by positing which we may explain the others as emendations, but hardly the converse. The word in this form EURAC^UILO EVANGELIST 79£ U not found anywhere else. The meaning of tlie compound is obscure. Etymologically, it would mean 'a surge raised by Eurus,' the E. or S.E.

wind, but .such a description of the etlect could hardly be applied to the wind itself which caused it. If we should take the form {i-pvK\vdui> (which occurs in B', one or two cursives, and a gloss of the Etym. M. s.v. Tv<piii>, and is approved by Griesb.)

and derive it from tvpvt, ' broad,' it would mean ' a wind raising a broad surge or surf ' ; but besides its lack of attestation, it is for the very reason of its greater suitableness dismissed by Nieyer as an obvious correction ; and it would yi'Jd a character more or less applicable to any A'ind blowing strongly rather than such a note (e.g. of direction) as we might expect to be the basis of a distinctive nautical name.

Euraquilo, on the other hand, commends itself not only by its early attestation, but by its special precision, OS made up of Eurus the S.E. or rather (as Smith adduces strong reasons for holding) the E., and Aquilo the N.E., wind, fitly expressing the direc- tion E.N.E. whence this wind blew.

It well accords (n) with the narrative of the incidence and eflects of the storm, and (6) with the experience of navi- gators in the Levant, quoted by Smith and others, m which ' southerly winds almost invariably shift to a violent northerly wind.' The exception taken to the form as ' inaamissible' (Reuss and others), 'because it is composed of a Greek and a Latin element,' vanishes in presence of analogous com- pounds such as Euronotus and Euro.

auster, and of the probably mixed nationality of the sailors and traders to whom such coinages were primarily due ; to say nothing of the survival, to which Renan calls attention, of the word Euraquilo itself in the name Gregolia given to the same wind by the Levantines ' as Eurinus has become Egripou.' Following strict analogy, we might expect the word to be, as in the Vulg.

, Euroaquilo, and the presence of a less regular form may have led to conjectural emendation (Overbeck) ; but we can hardly see how this should have deviated into so enigmatic a word as Euroclydon. Meyer says, ' Far more naturally would the converse take place, and the Y,vpoK\vSiiiti, not being understood, would be displaced by the similar Eypa/ciiXux . .

so that the latter form remains a product of old emendatory conjecture ' — a curious anticipation, in this particular case, of the theory more recently formulated by Burgon and Miller as to the older witnesses whom they designate ' the licentious scribes of the West.' For them [Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text, p. 46 f.)

this pa-s-sa-je supplies a si^al confirmation of their view, leading them to denounce in strong language Euraquilo as 'an imaginary name,' 'an impos- sible Latin name,' ' utterly missing the point, which is the violence of the wind as expressed in the term Euroclydon ' (a remarkable begging of the question, where the violence of the wind had already been explicitly affirmed in the epithet ' typhoiiic ' !)

Why should these early copyists be thus severely blamed for suspecting some corrup- tion to underlie the anomalous Euroclydon, ami preferring the more intelligible Euraquilo on such grounds of internal probability as have since com- mended it to the majority of critics and com- mentators 1 But when we consider the mass of testimony on the side of Euroclydon, and the dilBculty of accounting for the emergence of this form, if it had not been original, may we not find a feasible key to the solution of the problem in the view jnit forward by Conybeare and Howson (ii.

p. 40'2n.): 'The aildition of the words A KaXov^vot seems to us to show that it was a name popularly given by the sailors to the wind ; an 1 nothing is more natural than that St. Luke should use the word which he heard the sailors employ on the occasion ' ? I.rrERATDRR. — The subject is discussed in the ' Lives of 8t Paul ' by Conybeare and Howson, Le\vin, and others ; at con- si'ierable len{;th. but with unequal relevancy, by Falconer, f>ie9. on St. FauCs Vof/a-je. 2nd ed. pp.

12-19, 24-2(i ; most fully and satisiacLorily by .Smith, Voyaoe and Shipwreck, in his ' Diss, on the wind Euroclydon,' p. 119 IT., with .Appendices (rom Bentley and Granville Peon, pp. 287-292 ; cf. Blass, wl loc. William P. Dicksox.