Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/292

278 2proper names mythological names are the most difficult to interpret. Curtius has shown how many paths may be taken in the analysis of the name Achilles. The second part may be of the stem = people, or the stem  = stone. Does the first part of the word mean "water" (cf. aqua), or is it equivalent to as in  ("bulwark" or "the people")? Or is it akin to, as in ("one who causes pain")? Or is the "prothetic"? and is the root, and does it mean "clear-shining"? Or is the Word related to, and does it mean "dark"?

All these and other explanations are offered by the learned, and are chosen by Curtius to show the uncertainty and difficulty of the etymological process as applied to names in myth. Cornutus remarked long ago that the great antiquity of the name of Athene made its etymology difﬁcult. Difﬁcult it remains. Whatever the science of language may accomplish in the future, it is baffled for the present by the divine names of Greece, or by most of them, and these the most important.

There is another reason for the obscurity of the topic besides the darkness in which the origin of the names has been Wrapped by time. The myths had been very long in circulation before we ﬁrst meet them in Homer and Hesiod. We know not whence the gods came. Perhaps some of them were the chief