Pēne, pl.n: the Carthaginians. (“pay-neh”)
The meeting of Aeneas and the Carthaginian queen Dido from Virgil’s Aeneid (and-for some reason-lots of dogs!). University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections, MS 195. France, 15th century. Image from Allie Newman’s tumblr [book-historia.tumblr.com].
Lot s of hunting dogs: whippet, a sight hound, for chasing, terriers for going to ground and marking the quarry, in this case rabbits.
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Well, this is an odd one. By the time the Anglo-Saxons were settling in Britain the Carthaginians had ceased to exist for several hundred years. And Tunisia isn’t exactly near by. Why on earth did they have a specific word for them? It doesn’t even resemble the names of the two Carthaginians I have heard of (Dido, the fictional founder, and Hannibal Barca who is the source of the name Barcelona).
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It’s from the Latin Poeni (cognate with Phoenician): http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=poeni&la=la. The Anglo-Saxons would have gotten this word from reading classical texts like Orosius.
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Ah, that makes more sense then. Ta.
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