lucius vs. lycius

Hmm. Just had to comment on this Lucius/Lycius thing one more time. Lucius means bringer of light, Lycius is the name of the wolfly aspect of Apollo. So in Greek these names would be indistinguishable, but they are different names in Latin, right? But Latro was actually writing in primitive Latin, right?

Marc: Well, for starters, Latro never comes right out and tells us his name is "Lucius." Rather, at the end of Arete, he chronicles being hailed as "Lewqys" by the Phoenician boat-captain Muslak and then surmises that this indeed might be his real name. The Phoenician, I gather, is speaking with some sort of accent. Certainly Latro does not recognize the name as either 'Lucius' or 'Lycius'. Otherwise this is how he would have transcribed it. Complicating the matter still further the letter 'y' was adopted into the later Roman alphabet as representative of Greek 'v', which as Mr. Andre-Driussi notes in his Lexicon Urtheum (this is the correct Latin declension, not 'Urthus') is equivalent to our consonantal 'u'. Plus Latro is, if we ignore the guise that this is a work of fiction, translating from a milieu where everyone speaks Greek into early Latin, which is then given a modern translation into English by one Gene Wolfe. So to ask if 'Lucius' and 'Lycius' are two separate names at this stage, the answer is no, huh-uh, absolutely not. Now let's hear some more about the Pleistorus-Latro connection. epsilon mu