Smintheus: riflessioni sull’attestazione in miceneo e sull’etimologia del termine

The first attestation of the term Smintheus occurs as an anthroponym in Mycenaean tablets from Knossos and Thebes dating to Late Helladic/Late Minoan IIIB (ca. 1340/1330-1190/1190 a.C). From a morphological point of view, it is a noun in -eus from the nominal stem sminth- (sminthos, “mouse”), probably anhellenic as the suffix (-nth-) suggests. As it is a famous epiclesis of Apollo, the ancient literary, scoliographic and lexicographic sources provide conflicting etymological explanations of Smintheus, as derived from the toponym Sminthe/Sminthos or from the appellative sminthos that is - in its turn - explained as the Mysian or Cretan equivalent of the Greek word mous. As for the Mycenaean anthroponym, it seems more plausible to regard si-mi-te-u as derived from the rare zoonym. However, without firmer evidence for an Anatolian (or any other) etymology, it is still unclear whether the word sminthos actually originated on Crete or entered Mycenaean Greek via Minoan from elsewhere (e.g. Anatolia). In any case, the eventual, proposed existence of a cult of sminthoi (being si-mi-te-u a theophoric name) in Myce- naean Greece, which would have later been syncretized with that of Apollo, cannot be proven. Apart from these uncertainties, the attestation of the term Smintheus within the Mycenaean documentation of the Late Bronze Age is certainly of great interest: besides providing an unexpected chronological depth for the circulation of the term, it should be considered as the starting point for any future discussion on its origin and diffusion.