Gerron
γέρρον
Gerron (γέρρον, Lat. (gerra) properly signified anything made of wicker-work. 1. The name of the Persian shields, which were made of wicker-work covered with ox-hide, of an oblong shape, and were smaller and shorter than the Greek shields (ἀντὶ ἀσπίδων γέρρα, Hdt. 7.61, 9.61; Xen. Anab. 2.1, § 6; Cyrop. 7.1.33). 2. For the wattled screens or hurdles called γέρρα in the Athenian Agora, see ECCLESIA p. 699 a.
The Latin gerrae, nonsense
(Plaut. Asin. 3.3, 10; Epid. 2.2, 51; Poen. 1.1, 9) seems to be a metaphor from the lightness and flimsiness of wicker-work (Fest. s. vv. cerrones, gerrae). The connexion with queer,
Germ. quer (Wagner on Plaut. Trin. 3.3, 31), can hardly be maintained.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.