trijere-

This lexeme is found in the inscription of the inscribed pillar of Xanthos dated contextually to shortly after the ascension of Artaxerxes II in 405-404 BCE and stylistically around 400 BCE (Borchhardt & Eichner 1997-1999a:19f.).

[D.S.]

nom./acc. sg.	trijerẽ	TL 44b.22 (Xanthos)
		TL 44b.23 (Xanthos)

Meriggi 1978c:263 takes both words trijerẽ as accusatives (likewise DLL:70, Schürr 2007b:114), although they could be the subjects of the sentence. This depends on the transitivity of the verb erijete, which is argued here to be intransitive (see under lemma) and, therefore, we interpret trijerẽ as a nominative singular neuter.

[D.S.]

The word trijerẽ occurs in a military context and has been equated with Gk. τριήρης ‘three-oared ship’ (Savelsberg 1878a:217 followed by DLL:70, Schürr 2007b:114). The trireme is a warship with three banks of oars on each side. The meaning seems contextually adequate, since it is modified in line 22 by the putative ethnicon kijezẽ ‘of (the island) Chios (?)’, i.e. ‘the Chian trireme’, and in line 23 perhaps by the genitive xerẽhe, i.e. ‘the trireme of (the dynast) Xerẽi (?)’.

[D.S.]

If trijerẽ is nominative singular, it reflects a neuter stem in -e-.

[D.S.]

The lexeme trijere- has been taken as a Greek loanword by Savelsberg 1878a:217 and continues to be treated this way in the literature (Rutherford 2002a:204, Melchert 2014g:68). However, it is not explained how come Lycian would have added the syllable -ije- and dropped the suffix -me-. Thus, we would expect Lyc. *trire- or *trireme-, if it were actually borrowed. Considering the Lycian words for ‘three’, i.e. trija and tri-, it is morphologically possible to assume a genuine Lycian formation, e.g. trija + -re- → trijere- (+ vowel harmony) or tri- + *ere- with the actual Lycian word for ‘oar’ as second member of the compound. In other words, we are likely to be dealing with a parallel formation between Lycian and Greek and not with borrowings. Based on the current state of the corpus, either of these two morphological hypotheses remains possible. In any case, the claim that Lyc. trijere- is a loanword from Greek is very much influenced by the hellenophil view.

[D.S.]

For the lemma head see Lyc. A *trija, *tri.