Watchmen were accordingly posted by them on the towers, who gave warning whenever the engine was fired and the stone in transit, by shouting in their native tongue, "Sonny'sg coming"; whereupon those in the line of fire promptly made way and lay down, owing to which precautions the stone passed harmlessly through and fell in their rear.
g Probably, as Reland suggests, ha-eben ("the stone") was corrupted to habben ("the son"); compare similar jocose terms, such as "Black Maria," "Jack Johnson," used in the Great War.
σκοποὶ οὖν αὐτοῖς ἐπὶ τῶν πύργων καθεζόμενοι προεμήνυον, ὁπότε σχασθείη τὸ ὄργανον καὶ ἡ πέτρα φέροιτο, τῇ πατρίῳ γλώσσῃ βοῶντες "ὁ υἱὸς ἔρχεται." διίσταντο δὲ καθ' οὓς ᾔει καὶ προκατεκλίνοντο, καὶ συνέβαινε φυλαττομένων ἄπρακτον διεκπίπτειν τὴν πέτραν.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Friday, February 14, 2025
Sonny's Coming
Josephus, Jewish Wars 5.272 (tr. H. St. J. Thackeray, with his note):