I’m investigating the origin of the word “Vulcan”. There are those that claim that it might derive from the biblical Tubal Cain (Genesis 4:22).
That seems unlikely to me, and one of the reasons is because while the Greeks had regular contact and mutual borrowing from the Phoenicians / Hebrews / Eastern Mediterranean Semitic peoples, I don’t think the Romans did nearly as much.
The Romans “borrowed” many of the Greek Gods, and in the process, changed their names. Does anyone know of a source that discusses the process of changing the names? Why did they choose the new names? Were they based on Italian/Etruscan versions of the Greek names?
As I understand it, in many cases it wasn’t that the gods were borrowed, as that the pantheons were already similar (as are many other pantheons) and the gods got “identified”. “Oh, gee, this Zeus dude of yours sounds a lot like our Jupiter”. Sometimes a god the Greeks had got added to the Roman pantheon (they adopted other gods as well, not only Greek ones), but the main players are more of a sort of parallel evolution than a whole-cloth copy of the whole system.
From Roman Gods
As Rome’s power grew and its sphere of influence expanded, the Roman Empire encountered the older and richer religious beliefs of the Greeks. The Romans also came into contact with the beliefs of other eastern Mediterranean Sea cultures. As a result, Romans began to adopt various foreign gods and religious customs. In many cases, gods and heroes from foreign cultures were given temples in Rome. The acceptance of Greek gods had the biggest influence on Roman religion. The earliest Greek gods adopted by the Romans were Castor and Polydeuces in 484 BC. Later in the 5th century BC, the Greek god Apollo was introduced. Apollo would eventually symbolize Roman virtue and austerity. Other Roman gods that took on Greek characteristics included Diana (Artemis), Mercury (Hermes), Neptune (Poseidon), Venus (Aphrodite), and **Vulcan **(Hephaestus).
Online Etymology Dictionary:
Vulcan
god of fire and metal-work in Roman mythology, from L. Vulcanus, a word of Etruscan origin.
The reason why the Greek and Roman pantheons were similar was because many of their gods have roots in the same source. Both Greek and Latin belong to the same Indo-European linguistic family. For example, both the Zeus and Jupiter derive from an earlier Indo-European term describing a sky god.
Also, syncretismplayed a big role as well. The Romans would import the gods of the peoples they conquered and often mesh them together with their gods.
Any book on Roman (as opposed to Greek) mythology will have information on the names. As septimus says, the “Roman” forms are similar to the Etruscan. See, for instance, A.B. Cook’s massive and authoritative Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion, which has early inscriptions. They’re not as standardized as you’s think. One bronze mirror, for instance, has “Minerva” written as “Mnerfa”. The name “Mars”, besides “Maris”, was alsoi “Mamers” (hence the Mamertine wars against worshippers of Mars)
Getting “Vulcan” from “Tubal Cain” seems really unlikely, and the suggestion of a Biblical literalist.
Not sure why you put a question mark at the end of that.
In Genesis, Tubal Cain was said to be the first smith, IIRC. Equating the Etruscan and Roman creator of smithing with the Biblical creator of the art is a way of harmonizing the beliefs of different groups of people – but one that would only occur, I suspect, to someone to whom the Bible was the literal and true Word of God. Most other people wouldn’t feel compelled to try to harmonize them at all.
Sorry about the question mark - as you can see from the subject, I’m not having a lot of luck with question marks today.
The truth is that there was borrowing between the different groups - for example Adonis comes from Semitic roots.
And there is some similar type of sound between Tubal Cain (actually Tuval Kain) and Vulcan. It could be true, but I’m looking for some proof that the etymology of Vulcanus is Etruscan, and not Semitic. If most of the other Roman borrowings are of a similar nature, than that makes the case even stronger.
Nobody knows for sure what the etymology of Vulcanus is. The god probably came from the Etruscans, where he was known as Sethlan, but as for the name, the best guess is that it came from the Latin fulgur, “lightning”.
That’s the point. The Romans didn’t change the names of the gods. They already had a pantheon of gods that were similar to the Greek gods. They didn’t adopt the Greek gods, they decided that the Greek gods were actually the same as their gods, only with different names. So they didn’t adopt the god Zeus and change his name to Jupiter. They had a ruling god Jupiter, then when they came in contact with the Greeks decided that the Greek god Zeus was really the same as Jupiter, and the stories the Greeks told about Zeus were really stories about Jupiter.
We tend to think that the Greek and Roman gods were exactly the same except for the names, but that’s because they were merged over hundreds of years. And especially in retrospect, with the revival of classical knowledge in the Renaissance, it was common for later Europeans to see the Greek and Roman pantheons as identical. But back in 100 BC, people who lived in Greece and people who lived in Italy would have had very different ideas about the gods.
Imagine it like this. Suppose the Greeks had stories about Superman, while the Romans had stories about Captain Marvel (ie, Shazam). When the Romans talked to the Greeks they decided that Superman was just a version of Captain Marvel. But over time, the Romans found that Superman stories were just a lot better than Captain Marvel mythology, and pretty soon they retcon everything so that Captain Marvel becomes more and more like Superman, and after a few hundred years they’re essentially identical, even Captain Marvel’s costume changes to Superman’s costume, the only thing that remains is the name “Captain Marvel”.
That makes a lot of sense, and assuming it is true (there are those who connect some of the gods names etymologically, even Zeus and Jupiter), then it makes it much less likely that Vulcan would come from Tubal Cain.
I was afraid you might ask for one. :smack:
Juno (Iuno in early Latin) and Uni are almost certainly cognate but Etruscan and Latin prehistory may be too unknown to be sure who borrowed from whom. However, the Etruscan culture was more advanced and many, I think, guess the Latins did most of the borrowing. Here is a page I found just now with Google that, I think, lends credence to that.
The TVtropes entry for Classical Mythology contains quite a bit of information on the Greek & Roman gods–& how they were related. Including how the names were changed (or not).
(Standard TVtropes warning–you might end up in Xenaland!)
This is actually pretty widely accepted, with both [iZeus* and Jupiter traceable back to the Indo-Aryan root Dyaus = “sky” (in the case of Jupiter through Dyaus Piter = “Father Sky”).
But I haven’t heard of anyone tracing Etruscan]rooted names back to Semitic ones. There are a few cases where there are relationships – like the aforementioned Adonis/Adonai, or Iapetus/Japheth. But mere similarity often isn’t persuasive. Yahweh and Jove are pronounced very similarly, but aren’t thought to be related.
There was a certain evolution of the equated deities towards the characteristics where they overlapped rather than the ones where they were distinct, as well.
Poseidon, for example, was not specifically god of the sea to the earlier Greeks. He was connected with horses and with water – the ‘element’, not specifically water bodies. The founding of Athens and his mythical competition with Athena for its patronage illustrates this – he gave the Athenians horses and a spring in an effort to win their allegiance. It was only with his becoming equated with Neptune that he took on lordship of the sea as his particular focus.
Likewise while both Mercury and Hermes were messenger/herald/spokesman gods, Hermes was also god of thieves, god of boundaries à la Janus, etc. – and in the latter capacity was usually depicted priapically, with an erection (no clue what the connection between boundaries and boners might be).
Aphrodite likewise had some connection with the heavens that has not come down to the present, with her equivalence to Venus focusing on her patron-of-romantic/erotic-love role. Artemis was patron of virginity, to be sure, but also patroness of hunting and of childbirth and motherhood – in the latter capacity, she was equated with Cybele and the Magna Deorum Mater, the Great Mother of the Gods where she shows up as tutelary goddess of Ephesus.
:smack: