λέων

λέων (leon, "LEH-own") is the Greek word for lion, and the record shows it living most densely in epic and then, unexpectedly, in scripture: 318 occurrences across 78 works. The Iliad holds the largest share (45), where the beast recurs in Homer's battle similes; then Epictetus's Discourses (19), the philosopher's lecture-notes, and Herodotus's Histories (17). After that the count tips into the Greek Old Testament: Daniel (LXX) (16), the Septuagint Daniel; Regnorum III (12), the book also called Third Kingdoms; and Jeremias (11), the Greek Jeremiah. The animal the poets watch on the mountain reappears in the prophets' books.

The lexica keep the sense plain. LSJ (Liddell–Scott–Jones, 9th ed., 1940) gives "lion" and "lion's skin," and preserves the Homeric epithets: ὠμοφάγοι (ōmophagoi, "raw-eating"), αἴθων (aithōn, "tawny"), χαροποί (charopoi, "fierce-eyed"), ὀρεσίτροφος (oresitrophos, "mountain-reared"). It records a metaphor too, said of Artemis: σὲ λέοντα γυναιξὶ Ζεὺς θῆκεν (se leonta gynaixi Zeus thēken), "Zeus made thee a lion toward women."

The three etymological dictionaries all treat the word and none secures its origin. Beekes (Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill 2010), Chantraine (Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, 1968–80), and Frisk (Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 1960–72) each note the odd Iliadic dative plural λείουσι (leiousi), explained as a metrical lengthening, and the Mycenaean instrumental re-wo-pi — the word already there in the Bronze-Age tablets, with compounds like λεοντό-πους (leontopous, "lion-footed"). In Beekes's view a Semitic source is possible and no secure Indo-European root is claimed; Frisk relays Thieme's proposal that λέων is "der Brüller," "the roarer" (linked to Sanskrit ruváti, "to roar"), but reports it hedged, met with "Bedenken," reservations.

The record's citable surfaces run from Aeschylus's Agamemnon — five passages — to 1 Peter 5.8, where λέων stands in the letter's closing warning.

If the poets and the prophets both reached for the same beast, was it courage they saw in it, or hunger?