instances of this confusion. The solar deity, Phoibos
Lykegenes, was originally the "offspring of light"; but
popular etymology made a kind of werewolf of him by
interpreting his name as the "wolf-born." The name of the hero
Autolykos means simply the "self-luminous"; but it was more
frequently interpreted as meaning "a very wolf," in allusion
to the supposed character of its possessor. Bazra, the name of
the citadel of Carthage, was the Punic word for "fortress";
but the Greeks confounded it with byrsa, "a hide," and hence
the story of the ox-hides cut into strips by Dido in order to
measure the area of the place to be fortified. The old theory
that the Irish were Phoenicians had a similar origin. The name
Fena, used to designate the old Scoti or Irish, is the plural
of Fion, "fair," seen in the name of the hero Fion Gall, or
"Fingal"; but the monkish chroniclers identified Fena with
phoinix, whence arose the myth; and by a like misunderstanding
of the epithet Miledh, or "warrior," applied to Fion by the
Gaelic bards, there was generated a mythical hero, Milesius,
and the soubriquet "Milesian," colloquially employed in
speaking of the Irish.[66] So the Franks explained the name of
the town Daras, in Mesopotamia, by the story that the Emperor
Justinian once addressed the chief magistrate with the
exclamation, daras, "thou shalt give":[67] the Greek
chronicler, Malalas, who spells the name Doras, informs us
with equal complacency that it was the place where Alexander
overcame Codomannus with dorn, "the spear." A certain passage
in the Alps is called Scaletta, from its resemblance to a
staircase; but according to a local tradition it owes its name
to the bleaching skeletons of a company of Moors who were
destroyed there in the eighth century, while attempting to