Paris/Alexandros

The latest copy of JIES came today. Hooray! I'll be posting out of
this for a while.

The first item of interest is from the article "Antenor and
Vibhishana" by Marcel A.J. Meulder.

He compares the characters of Antenor, a brother or cousin of Priam of
Troy with a certain Vibhishana, a minor character from the Ramayana.
The are both relatives of a king or kings at war, and can be seen as
peacemakers, ambassadors. Antenor means 'opposed to the man', or
alternately, 'instead of the man', 'the one who goes instead, in the
stead of'.

Meulder gives an etymology for Alexandros (=Paris), not the usual 'to
shield, to guard against [for] men', 'defender of men'.

He writes (p. 404]

--start quote--
...the etymology of the Trojan noun Aleks-(andros) would be the same
as this of the hero *Rakshasa; both nouns would derive from the
Indo-European root *H2letk- meaning 'to make an attempt' ...[vs]
*H2lek(s) 'to shield, to guard against'.
--end quote

He cites C. Rose "Autor du mytho-cycle heroique indo-europeen"
_Ollodagos_ 11.239-272.

So. Trojan 'Alexandros' is actually a lost pun, 'to make an attempt
against men?' I'm not actually sure what all of this is supposed to
prove and don't completely understand the reference to "*Rakshasa",
which seems to be a dynastic title or the name of a country, and
certainly, not a hero.

The idea seems to be that Paris makes attempts against peace, while
Antenor opposes him and that both stories share a degree of common
descent, even at the etymological level.