Earlier, I inquired about the frequency of the use of
cete, which I had come across in Proba's Cento. Bret Mulligan commented that one often finds it in Late Antique exegesis, especially of the Book of Jonah. Today I was reading the anonymous Late Antique poem
De Iona Propheta and came across the word again, this time in the singular and spelled with an ending in the Latinized
-us instead of Greek
-os (interestingly, Lewis'
Elementary Latin Dictionary enters the word as
cetos, while Lewis & Short uses
cetus and puts in parentheses afterwards 'acc. to the Gr.
cētŏs).
The anonymous author of
De Iona Propheta then uses another word transliterated from Greek in the following line. Here are the two lines in question (85-6):
Iamque illic imo exoriens de gurgite cetus,
squamosum et conchis evolvens corporis agmen...
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