Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/292

260 BOOK Saxon wynn, pleasure, the German wonne, and the English winsome. The word Venus, therefore, denotes either love or favour. To the and Dionysos former signification belongs the Latin venustas ; to the latter the verb veneror, to venerate, in other words, to seek the favour of any one, venia being strictly favour or permission.^ Venus was probably not the oldest, and certainly not the only name for the goddess of love in Italy, as the Oscan deity was named Herentas.

Adonis The myth of Adonis links the legends of Aphrodite with those of Dionysos. Like the Theban wine-god, Adonis is born only on the death of his mother : and the tw^o myths are in one version so far the same that Dionysos like Adonis is placed in a chest, which being cast into the sea is carried to Brasiai, where the body of his mother is buried. But like Memnon and Athamas, the Syrian Tammuz or Adonis, Semele ^ is raised from the underworld and on her assumption receives the name of Dione. In the Hellenic mythology Here, in spite of all the majesty with lating to which she is sometimes invested and the power which is sometimes o/n^rd. exercised by her, is little more than a being of the same class with Kronos. The same necessity which produced the one evoked the other. Zeus must have a father, and the name of this father was suggested by the epithet Kronides or Kronion, Semitic though these words may be. In like manner he must have a wife, and her name must denote her abode in the pure and brilliant ether. Accordingly the name Here points to the Sanskrit svar, the gleaming heaven, and the Zend hvar, the sun, which in Sanskrit appears in the kindred form Surya, and in Latin as Sol.* She is thus strictly the consort of Zeus, with rather the semblance than the reahty of any independent powers. In the Iliad she speaks of

' I am indebted for this explanation word. to Professor Aufrecht through the kind- ' ^Velcker GricchiscJie Gotterlehre, i. ness of Dr. Muir. 363, regards the name as a cognate form

means imai^c. It is quite possible that large number of words which he sup- Semele may be really an oriental name, poses to be akin to it. Of this and to which, as in many other cases, an other explanations, Preller, who refers Hellenic derivation, suitable in itself, the name to the Sanskrit svar, says has been attached, and may mean ' the briefly," Die gewohnlichen Erkliirungen image of the sublunary world,' as the von ipa, die Erde, oder von a.}p, die neo - Platonist would say." — Brown, Luft, oder "Hpo, d. i. Hera, die Fran, Great Diony sink Afylh,.2,^. No Greek die Herrin schlechthin, lassen sich derivation has been attached to this weder etymologisch nqph dem Sinne name, which certainly cannot be ex- nach rechtfertigen. " — Griechische My- plained by reference to any Greek titologie, i. 124.
 * "Semel, theAssjTian Samulti, ... of ipa, earth, and traces it through a