Complete Works of St. Isidore of Seville, Vol. IV

just as a human does, and what the front ones cannot cut, they hand over to these to break up. The common people call them Colomellos canine/eye teeth because of their length and roundness. The last are the molares molars, which grind, mill, and knead what was cut and broken by the front ones, whence they are also called molares.

53. Moreover, the quality of sex distinguishes the number of teeth. For there are more in men, and fewer in women.

54. Gingiuae gums are named from the generating of teeth gignendis dentibus. They are also made for the adornment of the teeth, so that they would not appear as a horror rather than an ornament if naked.

55. Our palatum palate is placed like the sky caelum, and from there palatum [is derived] from polus pole by derivation. But the Greeks similarly call the palate ouranos sky/heaven, for the reason that because of its concavity it has the likeness of the sky.

56. Fauces throat/jaws are named from the pouring forth of voices, or because we speak famur voices through them. They are called arteriae arteries/windpipes, either because air, that is, breath, is carried through them from the lungs: or because they hold vital breath in tight and narrow passages, from which they emit the sounds of the voice: which sounds would sound in one way if the movement of the tongue did not make the variations of the voice.

57. Toles tonsils are called by that name in the Gallic language, which the common people call tusillae by diminution, which are accustomed to swell in the throat. Mentum chin is named because the mandibles arise from there, or because they are joined there.

58. Gurgulio windpipe/uvula draws its name from the throat guttur, whose passage extends to the mouth and nostrils, having a path through which the voice is transmitted to the tongue,

53. "Number of teeth." Words of Solinus, ch. 4.
Ib. Salmasius illustrates this passage at length in his "Plinian Exercises," page 33.
54. "Gingiuae." Lactantius, ch. 10.
55. "Our palate is like the sky." Cicero on Epicurus. But while he judges what is best for the palate, he did not look up to the palace of the sky, as Ennius says.
Ib. Iso in glosses on Prudentius, hymn 10. He says "under the roof" because ouranon in Greek is called palatum in Latin, because it is curved in the likeness of the sky, which is also called ouranon. Spaniards call the palate "the sky of the mouth."
56. "Arteriae." He confuses the windpipe original: "asperam arteriam" with the others that are diffused through the body containing vital breath, and he applies the Latin notation to the Greek word by his own right.
57. "Toles in Gallic language." Festus writes the same. Gloss: Tolae, Tolia (Greek: paristhmia), and Tusillae (Greek: paristhmia). Chacon said he read tosillas, not tonsillas, in the manuscript books of Cornelius Celsus, book 6, ch. 10, and tonsilla in Festus is a hewn stake.
Ib. In Grial's text it was tolles, in the note toles, which is the more common writing also among others. Some prefer tolae, tolarum.
58. "Gurgulio from throat." See Lactantius and Servius, Georgics 1.