sidorus" has escaped the notice of English etymologists generally:

"Hermias had a son (the elder of his philosopher sons) by AEdesia, and
one day, when the child was seven months old, AEdesia was playing with
him, as mothers do, calling him _babion_ and _paidion_,
speaking in diminutives. But Hermias overheard her, and was vexed, and
censured these childish diminutives, pronouncing an articulate
reprimand.... Now the Syrians, and especially those who dwell in
Damascus, call newborn children, and even those that have passed the
period of childhood, _babia_, from the goddess _Babia_, whom
they worship."

What is _babion_ but the English _baby_, what _babia_ but
the English _babies?_ We can hardly suppose that our English words
are derived from Syriac words in use fourteen centuries ago, or that the
latter were "modified from _maqui_" by "infantine" or other
influences. We are therefore driven to the conclusion that they were
alike "formed from the infantine sound _ba_," unless we accept
Damascius's derivation from _Babia_.

Unfortunately, we know no more concerning this goddess than did the
learned John Selden, who, writing two hundred and twenty-odd years ago,
"De Dis Syris," says, on page 296 of that work, "I cannot conjecture
whether _Babia,_ who seems to have been reverenced among the
Syrians as goddess of childhood and youth, is identical with the Syrian
Venus or not, and I do not remember to have met with any mention of this
deity except in Damascius's Life of Isidorus."

Selden's memory was not at fault: the words _babion, babia_, and
_Babia_ occur only in the passage above quoted.

In the absence of other evidence than Damascius's own, we may well
question whether he has not inverted the etymological relation between
the goddess and the babies. Most divinities owe their names to the
attributes or functions imputed to them by their worshippers. It seems,
therefore, more probable that the Syrian protectress of babies owes her
name to the _babia_ than that they were called _babia_ in her
honor. If, however, we accept Damascius's theory of their relation, what
forbids us to conjecture that the goddess's name was itself "formed from
the infantine sound _ba_"? In any case, the little domestic scene
between the priggish father and the dandling mother is amusing and
instructive to parents as well as to etymologists.

S.E.T.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

"The Russian Revolt: its Causes, Condition, and Pr