Because of the obscurity of the name Perseus and the legendary character of its bearer, most etymologists pass it by, on the presumption 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. There is some prospect that it descended into Greek from the Proto-Indo-European language. In that regard Robert Graves has espoused the only Greek derivation available. Perseus might be from the ancient Greek verb, "πέρθειν" (perthein), “to waste, ravage, sack, destroy”, some form of which appears in Homeric epithets. 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-. Pers-eus therefore is a sacker of cities; that is, a soldier by occupation, a fitting name for the first Mycenaean warrior.
The origin of perth- is more obscure. J. B. Hofmann[1] lists the possible root as *bher-, from which Latin ferio, "strike". This corresponds to Julius Pokorny’s *bher-(3), “scrape, cut.” Ordinarily *bh- descends to Greek as ph-. This difficulty can be overcome by presuming a dissimilation from the –th– in perthein; that is, the Greeks preferred not to say *pherthein. Graves carries the meaning still further, to the perse- in Persephone, goddess of death.
In Upper Thrace, BuLGaria, there is an 8000 years old sanctuary called Perperek (Perperikon), place of worship of the Thracian (First People in South East Europe) either Dionisus or Orpheus. In BuLGaria the root word per- means to strike. The First People in SE Europe (the BaLKans), Slavs and BuLGars is the same. Who said the Slavs came from North to South and not from South to North and that the BuLGars were not originally from SE Europe, people who have been East and back home!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks - that's a new idea to me, and very interesting.
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