In this darkness there is nothing to surprise. We are not wandering in a magical mist poured around us by the gods, but in a fog which has natural causes. First, there is the untrustworthiness of attempts to analyse proper names. "With every proper name the etymological operation is by one degree more difficult than with an appellative.... We have to deal with two unknown quantities," origin and meaning; whereas in appellatives we know the meaning and have only to hunt for the origin. And of all proper names mythological names are the most difficult to interpret. Curtius has shown how many paths may be taken in the analysis of the name Achilles. The second part may be of the stem: people, or the stem: stone. Does the first part of the word mean "water" (cf. aqua), or is it equivalent to: ("bulwark" or "the people")? Or is it akin to: "one who causes pain"? Or is the: "prothetic"? and is (it) the root, and does it mean "clear-shining"? Or is the word related to (------), and does it mean "dark"? All these and other explanations are offered by the learned, and are chosen by Curtius to show the uncertainty and difficulty of the etymological process as applied to names in myth. Cornutus remarked long ago that the great antiquity of the name of Athene made its etymology difficult. Difficult it remains.* Whatever the science of language may accomplish in the future, it is baffled for the present by the divine names of Greece, or by most of them, and these the most important.** * Cf. Curtius, Greek Etym., Engl, transl., i. 137-139. ** Gruppe, Griech. Culte und Mythtis, p. 169, selects Iapetos, Kadmos, Kabeiros, Adonis, Baitylos, Typhon, Nysos (in Dionysos), Acheron, Kimmerians and Gryps, aa certainly Phoenician. But these are not the names of the high gods.