INTRODUCTION xxvii

treatise its venereal character is clearly recognised, Fracasto—
rius ignores any idea of immorality. I need not dwell on the
absurd attempt of Pflug, among the moderns, to derive the
word from the Arabic sijf or suJt, 'under', and to regard Syphilus
as the 'earth—man', or the disease as 'extending over the earth';
this view has been sufficiently refuted by Boll.I An older and
equally fanciful notion is that, derived from 9s, the word carries
an allusion to prostitutes, who were vulgarly called porcae.
Falloppius (1523—1562) derives from c6r», »(A^os, 'companion
of love'; but in that case the name should have been Symphilus,
the derived word symphilis. 'The most noteworthy explana—
tion is that of Boll, which seems likely to be accepted as final
since his article is now cited in all good works of reference, such
as the Oxford Dictionary and Pauly—Wissowa (under Sipylus).
He maintains that, in his story of the impiety of Syphilus,
Fracastorius echoed the tale in Ovid, M&eamorphoses V, of
Sipylus, son of Niobe, who was slain by Apollo because his mother
had insulted Leto the mother of the god. Niobe herself was
turned to stone on Mt. Sipylus in Asia Minor. He regards the
false quantity Syphilus as a barbarism? on the part of Fracas—
torius. In a later Note in the same Journal, p. 168, Boll says
that he has found conclusive proof of his theory in the fact that
in certain variant readings in the MSS. of Ovid and Propertius,
the forms Siphylus and Syphilus occur for the mountain, or the

:In Neue Jahrbücher für das Klassische Allertum, 1910, Vol. 25,
pp. 72—77, Der Ursprung des Wortes Syphils, Boll gives his own
theory.  See, also, in the same Vol. p. 168, the Note, Zum Ursprung
des Wortes Syphilis. 'In the former article he suggests that, original—
ly, Fracastorius intended the title 'Syphilis' to mean 'the story of
Syphilus' (on the analogy of ZEneis, the story of ZEneas), but, as
he proceeded, decided to call the disease itself by that name. Boll
says that he regards as convincing, the arguments of Iwan Bloch,
in his work, Der Ursprung der Syphilis, Jena, 1901, in favor of the
American origin of the disease.

* Boll cites Lilio Giraldi, author of De poelis nostrorum temporum,
Ferrara, 1548, (an estimate of the Latin versifiers of Italy), who
said that the word Syphilis was derived a barbara voce, and thinks
that Giraldi had detected the crime of a false quantity. But
Giraldi almost certainly meant that the name Syphilus does not
occur in any classical writer; this would be against Boll's theory,
for the eccentric spelling of Syphilus for Sipylus would not have
troubled a contemporary of Fracastorius. — If Giraldi had recognised
Ovid's Sipylus under the disguise of Syphilus he would probably
have said so.