arx

From Proto-Indo-European *h₂erk- (“to protect, guard, hold, lock”). Cognates include Latin arca (“chest, box”), arceō (“I defend”), arcānus (“hidden, secret”), arcera (“covered carriage for sick people”), Old Armenian արգել (argel, “obstacle”) and Ancient Greek ἀρκέω (arkéō).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /arks/, [ärks̠]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /arks/, [ärks]

arx f (genitive arcis); third declension

1. stronghold, castle, citadel, fortress, acropolis
   • Vergil, Aeneid, 2.56:

     ... Trōiaque, nunc stārēs, Priamīque arx alta, manērēs.

     ... and Troy, you would now be standing, and Priam's mighty citadel still endure.

   1. (figuratively) defence, protection, refuge, bulwark
   2. tyranny (with arx as the abode of tyrants)
2. (metonymically) height, summit, pinnacle, top, peak (since castles were often built on heights)
   • 8 CE – 12 CE, Ovid, Tristia 1.72:

     venit in hōc illa fulmen ab arce caput.

     It fell on this head [of mine], a thunderbolt from that height.
     (Jupiter (mythology) hurled thunderbolts from heaven, whereas the Emperor Augustus, living atop the Palatine Hill, had sentenced Ovid to exile.)

Third-declension noun (i-stem).

• “arx”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “arx”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• arx in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• arx in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette
• “arx”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “arx”, in Samuel Ball Platner (1929), Thomas Ashby, editor, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, London: Oxford University Press
• “arx”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890) A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin