Men in general are foolishly afraid of him,
and talk with horror of the world below from which no one may return.
The reason why his subjects never wish to come back, even if they
could, is that the God enchains them by the strongest of spells, namely
by the desire of virtue, which they hope to obtain by constant
association with him. He is the perfect and accomplished Sophist and
the great benefactor of the other world; for he has much more than he
wants there, and hence he is called Pluto or the rich. He will have
nothing to do with the souls of men while in the body, because he
cannot work his will with them so long as they are confused and
entangled by fleshly lusts. Demeter is the mother and giver of food—e
didousa meter tes edodes. Here is erate tis, or perhaps the legislator
may have been thinking of the weather, and has merely transposed the
letters of the word aer. Pherephatta, that word of awe, is pheretapha,
which is only an euphonious contraction of e tou pheromenou
ephaptomene,—all things are in motion, and she in her wisdom moves with
them, and the wise God Hades consorts with her—there is nothing very
terrible in this, any more than in the her other appellation
Persephone, which is also significant of her wisdom (sophe). Apollo is
another name, which is supposed to have some dreadful meaning, but is
susceptible of at least four perfectly innocent explanations. First, he
is the purifier or purger or absolver (apolouon); secondly, he is the
true diviner, Aplos, as he is called in the Thessalian dialect (aplos =
aplous, sincere); thirdly, he is the archer (aei ballon), always
shooting; or again, supposing alpha to mean ama or omou, Apollo becomes
equivalent to ama polon, which points to both his musical and his
heavenly attributes; for there is a “moving together” alike in music
and in the harmony of the spheres. The second lambda is inserted in
order to avoid the ill-omened sound of destruction. The Muses are so
called—apo tou mosthai. The gentle Leto or Letho is named from her
willingness (ethelemon), or because she is ready to forgive and forget
(lethe). Artemis is so called from her healthy well-balanced nature,
dia to artemes, or as aretes istor; or as a lover of virginity, aroton
misesasa. One of these explanations is probably true,—perhaps all of
them. Dionysus is o didous ton oinon, and oinos is quasi oionous
because wine makes those think (oiesthai) that they have a mind (nous)
who have none. The established derivation of Aphrodite dia ten tou
athrou genesin may be accepted on the authority of Hesiod. Again, there
is the name of Pallas, or Athene, which we, who are Athenians, must not
forget. Pallas is derived from armed dances—apo tou pallein ta opla.
For Athene we must turn to the allegorical interpreters of Homer, who
make the name equivalent to theonoe, or possibly the word was
originally ethonoe and signified moral intelligence (en ethei noesis).
Hephaestus, again, is the lord of light—o tou phaeos istor. This is a