Note 257 — V

Let me illustrate this by further instances in a note. Thus βούτυρον, from which, through the Latin, our ‘butter’ has descended to us, is borrowed (Pliny, H.N. xxviii. 9) from a Scythian word, now to us unknown: yet it is sufficiently plain that the Greeks so shaped and spelt it as to contain apparent allusion to cow and cheese; there is in βούτυρον an evident feeling after βοῦς and τυρόν. Bozra, meaning citadel in Hebrew and Phœnician, and the name, no doubt, which the citadel of Carthage bore, becomes Βύρσα on Greek lips; and then the well known legend of the ox-hide was invented upon the name; not having suggested it, but being itself suggested by it. Herodian (v. 6) reproduces the name of the Syrian goddess Astarte in a shape that is significant also for Greek ears—Ἀστροάρχη, The Star-ruler, or Star-queen. When the apostate and hellenizing Jews assumed Greek names, ‘Eliakim’ or “Whom God has set”, became ‘Alcimus’ (ἄλκιμος) or The Strong (1 Macc. vii. 5). Latin examples in like kind are ‘comissatio’, spelt continually ‘comessatio’, and ‘comessation’ by those who sought to naturalize it in England, as though it were connected with ‘cŏmedo’, to eat, being indeed the substantive from the verb ‘cōmissari’ (—κωμάζειν), to revel, as Plutarch, whose Latin is in general not very accurate, long ago correctly observed; and ‘orichalcum’, spelt often ‘aurichalcum’, as though it were a composite metal of mingled gold and brass; being indeed the mountain brass (ὀρείχαλκος). The miracle play, which is ‘mystère’, in French, whence our English ‘mystery’ was originally written ‘mistère’, being properly derived from ‘ministère’, and having its name because the clergy, the ministri Ecclesiæ, conducted it. This was forgotten, and it then took its present form of ‘mystery’, as though so called because the mysteries of the faith were in it set out.