XPost: alt.language.latin   
   From: benlizro@ihug.co.nz   
      
   On 6/10/2024 6:52 p.m., Steve Hayes wrote:   
   > On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 18:40:08 +0100, Ed Cryer    
   > wrote:   
   >   
   >> Belladonna   
   >> It acquired its alter name in the middle ages, when women used it   
   >> because of how it dilates the pupils, making them more sexy.   
   >> Beautiful Lady.   
   >>   
   >> Pagan.   
   >> In Latin "paganus" meant "villager" or "peasant". That's what Cicero   
   >> would have understood. But early Christians used it as a depreciatory   
   >> term for those who stuck to polytheistic or pre-Christian beliefs; the   
   >> gods of Old Rome.   
   >   
   > Pagan - origin of the term.   
   >           Source: Fox, "Christian & Pagans" 1987:30.   
   >      "In antiquity, pagans already owed a debt to Christians.   
   >    Christians first gave them their name, pagani... In everyday   
   >    use, it meant either a civilian or a rustic. Since the   
   >    sixteenth century the origin of the early Christians' usage   
   >    has been disputed, but of the two meanings, the former is the   
   >    likelier. Pagani were civilians who had not enlisted through   
   >    baptism as soldiers of Christ against the powers of Satan. By   
   >    its word for non-believers, Christian slang bore witness to   
   >    the heavenly battle which coloured Christians' view of life."   
      
   OED's etymological note:   
      
   The semantic development of post-classical Latin paganus in the sense   
   ‘non-Christian, heathen’ is unclear.....   
      
   There are three main explanations of the development:   
      
   (i) The older sense of classical Latin pāgānus is ‘of the country,   
   rustic’ (also as noun). It has been argued that the transferred use   
   reflects the fact that the ancient idolatry lingered on in the rural   
   villages and hamlets after Christianity had been generally accepted in   
   the towns and cities of the Roman Empire; compare Orosius Histories 1.   
   Prol. ‘Ex locorum agrestium compitis et pagis pagani vocantur.’   
      
   (ii) The more common meaning of classical Latin pāgānus is ‘civilian,   
   non-militant’ (adjective and noun). Christians called themselves mīlitēs   
   ‘enrolled soldiers’ of Christ, members of his militant church, and   
   applied to non-Christians the term applied by soldiers to all who were   
   ‘not enrolled in the army’.   
      
   (iii) The sense ‘heathen’ arose from an interpretation of paganus as   
   denoting a person who was outside a particular group or community, hence   
   ‘not of the city’ or ‘rural’; compare Orosius Histories 1. Prol. ‘qui   
   alieni a civitate dei..pagani vocantur.’ See C. Mohrmann Vigiliae   
   Christianae vol. 6 (1952) 9ff.   
   [Thus people from outside the city -- the City of God.]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)