# Soldier of What? *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 20 Jan 2003* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Brett M. Grace *20 Jan 2003, 21:24* Howdy all. I was drawn to a reference to Soldier of Arete in somebody's blog today. He mentioned off-handedly that "[arete]... means 'a sharp-crested ridge in rugged mountains'", the word deriving from the Latin for fishspine. Having a smattering of Greek, and being ignorant of the perfectly cromulent English word, I took it to mean exclusively "manliness, excellence, virtue" -- it's similar in usage to Latin's virtus if that makes it clear. I'm forced to plead, "it looked Greek to me." I had always thought that putting 'arete' in the title was a kind of signpost stating "this is not an accessible book." Doubly so if its English doppleganger has quite a different meaning. Unless... it's an allusion to the rocky geography of the Pelopennesus and Attica, where much of the action takes place. Er, I think. My recollection of the book grows dim. I had been bothered by the lack of symmetry between "Mist" and "Arete" which this interpretation eases. Thoughts anyone? BMG PS: Thucydides is also good background for the second book. ---