Forgotten Paths: Etymology and the Allegorical Mindset

Chapter 3 The Names of Heroes: Greek and Alexandrian Etymologizing

chapter 3 the naMes oF heroes greek and alexandrian etymologizing so far i have endeavored to provide a viable model of allegorical etymology. to this end, I dealt first with etymology’s loss of prestige within contemporary linguistics and called for a reappraisal of its role: the stress twentieth-century linguists lay on morphology and phonology fails to account for the extralinguistic claims of ancient etymologizing . to narrow the scope of research, I then set up a comparison between etymology and allegory: two rhetorical devices, scholarly and popular, that stray along the controversial divide between language and the world. Janus-like, language concurrently reflects and affects reality, as in the two maxims: Nomen est omen and Nomina sunt consequentia rerum. It is now time to look for antecedents to these medieval adages in greek and alexandrian culture by examining eponyms, proper and common names, in which, I will argue, etymology and allegory coalesce . eponyms denote characteristics of their bearers—they are a consequentia of them—but also shape their temperament or physical appearance; they work as an omen of the bearers’ destiny. also, eponyms can be said to strive for the kind of “unity in diversity” featured in etymegoreia. We are going to look at samples from homeric literature and from there move on to Plato’s dialogue on the “Correctness of names”: the Cratylus. that section reviews Plato’s ideas on names and etymologizing to refute scholars who read his work as an antiallegorical and anti-etymological manifesto. Final pages are devoted to Philo of alexandria, who bracketed onomastics with divination and complex philosophical allegorizing. 47 etymology and onomastics the link between allegory and etymology with regard to ancient onomastics—the study of proper names—is widely mentioned but rather cursorily explored. In his european Literature and the Latin Middle ages, Curtius did cite numerous instances from the Iliad of “speaking names,” that is, names that allegorize physical or moral qualities of their bearers.1 First, he notes that homer derived odysseus ’s name (“Wrathful one”) from the fact that his grandfather was “full of hatred” (ojdussovmeno~). then he explains how odysseus, before revealing himself, resorted to etymological puns. “he comes from ‘sorrowfield’ (alybas), his name is ‘strife’ (esperitos), and he is the son of ‘hardlife Vexation’ (apheidas Polypemonides).”2 he even adds examples of many other homeric eponyms like hector (“shielder”), thersites (“Impudent”), thoas (“stormy”), harmonides (“Joiner”). But Curtius was unwilling to read much in what he ultimately judged as homer’s “indulg[ence]” in “etymological play.”3 and, he was quick to remark, playful etymologizing of this kind occurred just as often in Pindar (who had speculated on the name themistios as being from qemovw iJstiva—“sailspreader”) and in aeschylus (who had allegorized at length over helen’s name, jElhvnh). apart from this hasty dismissal of eponymic etymologies, it now appears that the main shortcoming of Curtius’s survey of greek etymologizing lies in its conflation of separate etymological trends. In the outline proposed by reitzenstein as early as 1897,4 and recently endorsed by Zamboni, greek etymologizing was broken down into four chronological phases.5 the first centers upon the controversy between the natural and the convention-  GREEK AND ALExANDRIAN ETYMOLOGIzING 1. ernst robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard r. trask (new York: Pantheon Books, 1953). 2. Ibid., 495. 3. Ibid. 4. richard reitzenstein, Geschichte der griechischen Etymologika (Leipzig: 1897); and Etymologika , in “Paulys real-encyclopadie der classischen altertumswissenschaft,” 6 vols. (stuttgart : J. B. Metzler, 1907). 5. oversimplification in a chronology of this kind is inevitable, but such framing may GREEK AND ALExANDRIAN ETYMOLOGIzING  al views of language: names either represent reality (physikài eikónes) or are merely artificial labels dictated by custom (technētai eikónes). this is the phase Zamboni comments on when he says that the philosophical search for aijtiva, or ultimate cause, is focused “not much on language, but rather on things themselves.”6 the second phase centers on grammar: it starts with an inquiry into primitive words (prw'ta ojnovmata) and a description of their possible combinations. It is at this alexandrian stage that etymology breaks away from analogy and history to become an autonomous field. the remaining two phases are hard to make out (if not by pure chronology), but they eventually merge into the new, systematic format of the Etymologicon. From this account, it is the stoics who stand out as...