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In Greek mythology, Perseus (; ), the legendary founder of Mycenae and of the Perseid dynasty of Danaans, was the first hero. Perseus beheaded the Gorgon Medusa and saved Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus. Perseus was the son of the mortal Danaë and the god Zeus. He was also the great grandfather of Heracles, also a son of Zeus. ==Etymology== Because of the obscurity of the name ''Perseus'' and the legendary character of its bearer, most etymologists pass it by, on the presumption that it might be pre-Greek; however, the name of Perseus’ native city was Greek and so were the names of his wife and relatives. There is some prospect that it descended into Greek from the Proto-Indo-European language. In that regard Robert Graves has espoused the only Greek derivation available. Perseus might be from the Greek verb, "πέρθειν" (''perthein''), “to waste, ravage, sack, destroy”, some form of which appears in Homeric epithets. According to Carl Darling Buck (''Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin''), the ''–eus'' suffix is typically used to form an agent noun, in this case from the aorist stem, ''pers-''. ''Pers-eus'' therefore is a sacker of cities; that is, a soldier by occupation, a fitting name for the first Mycenaean warrior. The origin of ''perth-'' is more obscure. J. B. Hofmann lists the possible root as '' *bher-'', from which Latin ''ferio'', "strike". This corresponds to Julius Pokorny’s '' *bher-''(3), “scrape, cut.” Ordinarily *bh- descends to Greek as ph-. This difficulty can be overcome by presuming a dissimilation from the –th– in ''perthein''; that is, the Greeks preferred not to say *pherthein. Graves carries the meaning still further, to the ''perse-'' in Persephone, goddess of death. John Chadwick in the second edition of ''Documents in Mycenaean Greek'' speculates as follows about the Mycenaean goddess ''pe-re- *82'', attested on the PY Tn 316 tablet (Linear B: ) and tentatively reconstructed as *''Preswa'': :”It is tempting to see...the classical Perse...daughter of Oceanus...; whether it may be further identified with the first element of Persephone is only speculative.” A Greek folk etymology connected the name of the Persian (Pars) people, whom they called the Persai. The native name, however, has always had an -a- in Persian. Herodotus〔Herodotus, vii.61〕 recounts this story, devising a foreign son, Perses, from whom the Persians took the name. Apparently the Persians themselves〔Herodotus vii.150〕 knew the story, as Xerxes tried to use it to suborn the Argives during his invasion of Greece, but ultimately failed to do so. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Perseus」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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