When Milton says (xi. 831.) "push'd by the horned flood," he seems rather to mean, as Newton explains him, that "rivers, when they meet with anything to obstruct their passage, divide themselves and become horned as it were, and hence the ancients have compared them to bulls."
C.B.
["M." (Oxford) refers our correspondent to Facciolati, Lexicon, ed. Bailey, voc. Corun.]
Horns (No. 24. p. 383.).—1. Moses' face, Ex. ch. xxxiv. (karan, Heb.), shot out beams or horns of light (from keren, Heb.); so the first beams of the rising sun are by the Arabian poets compared to horns. Absurdly rendered by Aqu. and Vulg. (facies) cornuta erat. Whence painters represent Moses as having horns.—Gesenius, Heb. Lex.
2. There appear many reasons for likening rivers to bulls. Euripides calls Cephisus taumomorphos, and Horace gives Aufidus the same epithet, for the same reason probably, as makes him call it also "longe sonans," "violentus," and "acer;" viz., the bull-like roaring of its waters, and the blind fury of its course, especially in flood time. Other interpretations may be given: thus, Milton, Dryden, and others, speak of the "horned flood," i.e., a body of water which, when it meets with any obstruction, divides itself and becomes horned, as it were. See Milt. P.L. xi. 831., and notes on the passage by Newton and Todd. Dryden speaks of "the seven-fold horns of the Nile," using the word as equivalent to winding stream. It would be tedious to multiply examples.
3. Of this phrase I have never seen a satisfactory explanation. "Coruna nasci" is said by Petronius, in a general sense, of one in great distress. As applied to a cuckold, it is common to most of the modern European languages. The Italian phrase is "becco cornuto" (horned goat), which the Accademici della Crusca explain by averring that that animal, unlike others can without anger bear a rival in his female's love.
"Dr. Burn, in his History of Westmoreland, would trace this crest of cuckoldom to horns worn as crests by those who went to the Crusades, as their armorial distinctions; to the infidelity of consorts during their absence, and to the finger of scorn pointed at them on their return; crested indeed, but abused."—Todd's Johnson's Dictionary.
R.T.H.G.
Why Moses represented with Horns.—You may inform your querist "L.C." (No. 24 p. 383.), that the strange practice of making Moses appear horned, which is not confined to statues, arose from the mistranslation of Exod. xxxiv. 30. & 35. in the Vulgate, which is to the Romanist his authenticated scripture. For there he reads "faciem Moysi cornutum," instead of "the skin of Moses' face shone." The Hebrew verb put into our type is coran, very possibly the root of the Latin cornu: and its primary signification is to put forth horns; its secondary, to shoot forth rays, to shine. The participle is used in its primary sense in Psalms, xix. 31.; but the Greek Septuagint, and all translators from the Hebrew into modern European languages, have assigned to the verb its secondary meaning in Exod. xxxiv. In that chapter the nominative to coran is, in both verses, undeniably skin, not head nor face. Now it would obviously be absurd to write "his skin was horned," so that common sense, and the authority of the Septuagint, supported by the language of St. Paul in his paraphrase and comment on this passage in 2 Cor. iii. 7-13., ought to have been sufficient to guide any Christian translator as to the sense to be attached to coran in the mention of Moses.