Abstract
Mr. H. P. VOWLES'S account in NATURE of June 13, p. 889, of the Kashgar water-mill is a great help towards the understanding of a hard passage, the difficulty of which is much increased by corruption of Pliny's text. For one false reading Mr. Vowles's undershot water-wheel suggests at once the necessary emendation; Rotis etiam quas aqua verset obiter et molat: for obiter, hitherto unintelligible, read subter. I suggest also that in the preceding phrase ruido pilo does not at all mean a roughened pestle, but is equivalent to ruente pilo, and means a failing pestle, or drop-hammer—precisely what the sense requires. We may then translate: “In Italy, falling pestles, or drop-hammers, are mostly used; and the grinding is moreover carried on by means of wheels, turned by a stream flowing underneath”. Pilum Graecum, which occurs in a Plautine fragment, “quasi tolleno aut pilum Græcum reciproces”, seems to have been the technical name for the pair of alternate hammers, working precisely as in the Kashgar mill.
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T., D. [Letters to the Editor]. Nature 127, 974 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/127974b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/127974b0
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