Sambuca

Sambuca [Gk. *sambyke], 1. chordophone of ancient Rome, believed to have been a horizontal *angular harp. Its players, the sambucistrae, were girls of very low repute; 2. in med. Europe it denoted a chordophone and was glossed in the 10th c. as *hruozza, the cruit. As the Lat. word sambucus means the elder tree, sambuca also stood for a woodwind. In an 8th-c. Saxon vocabulary, sambucus is glossed as *swegelhorn. In the 14th c. it is compared to a harp, with as many strings, also identified with…