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Swords and sandals 3 guide3/10/2024 ![]() ![]() Graves carries the meaning still further, to the perse- in Persephone, goddess of death. This difficulty can be overcome by presuming a dissimilation from the –th– in pérthein, which the Greeks would have preferred from a putative *phérthein. This corresponds to Julius Pokorny’s *bher-(3), "scrape, cut." Ordinarily *bh- descends to Greek as ph. ![]() Hofmann lists the possible root as *bher-, from which Latin ferio, "strike". The further origin of perth- is more obscure. Pers-eus therefore is a "sacker of cities", that is, a soldier by occupation, a fitting name for the first Mycenaean warrior. According to Carl Darling Buck ( Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin), the –eus suffix is typically used to form an agent noun, in this case from the aorist stem, pers. ![]() Perseus might be from the Greek verb πέρθειν ( pérthein, "to waste, ravage, sack, destroy") some form of which appears in Homeric epithets. In that regard Robert Graves has proposed the only Greek derivation available. There is some idea that it descended into Greek from the Proto-Indo-European language. Because of the obscurity of the name "Perseus" and the legendary character of its bearer, most etymologists presume that it might be pre-Greek however, the name of Perseus's native city was Greek and so were the names of his wife and relatives. ![]()
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