never knewest--goddesses are fabled to leap out from the armpits or
feet of their fathers. Thou must know that what Plato, in the
"Cratylus," made Socrates say in jest, the learned among us practise
in sad earnest. For, when they wish to explain the nature of any
God, they first examine his name, and torment the letters thereof,
arranging and altering them according to their will, and flying off
to the speech of the Indians and Medes and Chaldeans, and other
Barbarians, if Greek will not serve their turn. How saith Socrates?
"I bethink me of a very new and ingenious idea that occurs to me;
and, if I do not mind, I shall be wiser than I should be by to-
morrow's dawn. My notion is that we may put in and pull out letters
at pleasure and alter the accents."

Even so do the learned--not at pleasure, maybe, but according to
certain fixed laws (so they declare); yet none the more do they
agree among themselves. And I deny not that they discover many
things true and good to be known; but, as touching the names of the
Gods, their learning, as it standeth, is confusion. Look, then, at
the goddess Athene: taking one example out of hundreds. We have
dwelling in our coasts Muellerus, the most erudite of the doctors of
the Alemanni, and the most golden-mouthed. Concerning Athene, he
saith that her name is none other than, in the ancient tongue of the
Brachmanae, Ahana, which, being interpreted, means the Dawn. "And
that the morning light," saith he, "offers the best starting-point
for the later growth of Athene has been proved, I believe, beyond
the reach of doubt or even cavil." {8}

Yet this same doctor candidly lets us know that another of his
nation, the witty Benfeius, hath devised another sense and origin of
Athene, taken from the speech of the old Medes. But Muellerus