Laudator Temporis Acti

Joshua T. Katz, "The Riddle of the sp(h)ij-: The Greek Sphinx and her Indic and Indo-European Background," in Georges-Jean Pinault and Daniel Petit, edd., La langue poétique Indo-Européenne: actes du colloque de travail de la Société des Études Indo-Européennes (Indogermanische Gesellschaft/Society for Indo-European Studies), Paris, 22-24 octobre 2003 (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), pp. 157-194 (at 174-175):

Although it may seem patently absurd initially, there is in fact no a priori reason why Sphinx should not at some level mean « buttocks »: humans, at least, are frequently named after lower body parts,⁴³ and in iconography, the monster's haunches are typically emphasized. On this interpretation, the name Sphinx might actually be connected to the creature's riddling nature, as Georges-Jean Pinault cleverly points out to me: the greatest riddle of all is sex and the greatest sexual riddle the forbidden part of one's own body that one cannot see, namely the buttocks or anus.

43. The most detailed study of the phenomenon of anatomical pars pro toto focuses on Latin (Adams 1982a; see also Adams 1982b: Index [271] s.v. pars pro toto), where the considerable majority of cases are overtly sexual (e.g., Mentula « Mr. Prick »); for Greek (where the locus classicus is the seemingly abusive γαστέρες οἶον, Th. 26, « mere bellies » in Hesiod's Dichterweihe, for which a new interpretation is offered in Katz & Volk 2000), Bain 1994 makes a good start with his discussion of a graffito from ca. 400 B.C. about a man from Thorikos called ὁ πρωκτός « (known as) Asshole » (compare Neumann 1999: 202-5 and see also Bain, 1995 and 1999a).

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