PISTEUW/PEIQOMAI/PEIQW (was "no subject")

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Jul 28 17:16:37 EDT 1999


At 4:54 PM -0400 7/28/99, Pilot75686 at aol.com wrote:
>I understand that the word believe come from the name oof a Greek Goddess,
>(peitho) and her accomplice was(eros). Where do I find this in Greek
>Mythology?

I think you are misunderstanding. There is a Greek verbal root
PEIQ/POIQ/PIQ which is the source of several different Greek words,
including

	PEIQW (active verb): persuade, win over to a viewpoint
	PEIQOMAI (middle verb): give heed to, come over to a viewpoint, obey
	PEIQW/-OUS (3d decl. noun): persuasion, seduction
	PISTIS/-EWS (ed decl. noun): faith, belief, trust, loyalty, etc.
	PISTEUW (intr. verb): believe, trust, have faith
	and several others

There is a goddess PEIQW (identical in form with the noun above), most
commonly seen as an associate of Aphrodite and Eros, in which context the
word should mean "Seduction" rather than "Persuasion." You'll find her
genealogy in Hesiod's Theogony; Aeschylus offers a different genealogy in
the Agamemnon, where she is the daughter of ATH ("delusion"). Solon had a
temple of PEIQW in association with a public brothel under the acropolis in
Athens.

But DON'T take seriously the notion that the Greek word for "believe"
derives from the name of the goddess PEIQW; rather both derive from a
common verbal root.

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Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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