The word _silver_ (Gothic, _silubr_) has even been conjecturally associated with the Homeric Alybé;[322] while other philologists prefer to regard it as equivalent to the Assyrian _sarpu_.[323] All that is certain is the absence of a general Aryan name for the metal, showing that the Aryans collectively made no acquaintance with it. Thus, the Greek _arguros_ and the Latin _argentum_, although closely related, are really different words. That is to say, they were formed independently from the common root, _ark_, to shine, modified into _arg_, white. Its whiteness, in fact, has supplied the designations of this metal in all parts of the world. Silver is the ‘white iron’ of the Kaffirs, the ‘white gold’ of the Afghans, the ‘white copper’ of the Vedic Indians; and the antique Accadians and Egyptians defined it by the same obvious quality.[324] The Greek _arguros_ is, then, a comparatively late word, formed, perhaps, after the Achæan tribes were already settled in their Hellenic home, when their first supplies of silver began to come in from Pontic Asia Minor. Footnote 322: Hehn, _Wanderings of Plants_, p. 443. Footnote 323: Taylor, _Origin of the Aryans_, p. 143. Footnote 324: Schrader and Jevons, _Antiquities of the Aryans_, pp. 154, 180-82. The subsequence of its invention to the adoption into the Greek language of _chrusos_, gold, can be inferred from the relative paucity of proper and placenames compounded with it. Homer has only four such, while his ‘golden’ appellations number thirteen. Take as specimens the series Chryse, Chryses, and Chryseïs, designating a place in the Troad, the priest of Apollo in that place, and his daughter, all memorably connected with the tragic Wrath of Achilles. The nomenclature, no doubt, took its rise from solar associations; yet the typical relationship between gold and the sun, silver and the moon, is nowhere in the Epics directly recognised. Helios is never decorated with the epithet ‘golden’; Apollo, if he wears a golden sword, is more strongly characterised by his silver bow. Lunar mythology is ignored; nor is the ready metaphor of the ‘silver moon’ to be found in Homeric verse. The ‘apparent queen’ of the nocturnal sky does not there, as elsewhere in poetry and folk-lore, ‘throw her silver mantle o’er the dark.’ The metallic sheen, on the other hand, of water rippling in sunshine, produces its due effect in the generation of epithets; rivers being habitually called ‘silver-eddying,’ and Thetis, the Undine of the Iliad, wearing a specific badge as ‘silver-footed.’