Despite the universality of the lightning-flash as a weather phenomenon and the conceptualization of the thunder-bolt as a weapon of the weather deity in various Indo-European mythological traditions, there is no securely reconstructible word for this concept of Proto-Indo-European date, but rather all lexemes denoting ‘lightning-flash’ appear to be secondary formations within the individual branches derived from words encompassing general semantic domains such as ‘light’, ‘fire’, ‘shine’, ‘blaze’, flash’, etc. (cf. Buck 1949: 56– 57, Mallory & Adams 1997: 353). In Ancient Greek, the lightning-flash is designated by the term ἀστραπή with many variants, e.g., στεροπή, ἀστεροπή; denominal verbs ἀστράπτω, στράπτω; Στορπάο (epithet of Zeus at Tegea), etc., which is commonly taken to reflect an inherited compound *h₂str -h₃okʷ-éh₂ ‘star-eye’ vel sim. (Peters 1980: 208n160; cf. Mayrhofer 1986: 125). However, as Beekes (1987) has noted, the variants attested in the Greek dialects are not easily reconciled to an Indo-European proto-form and proposed that it should alternatively be assigned to the non-Indo-European substratum vocabulary in Greek (cf. also Beekes 2010: 156, 1402). In this paper I will re-examine the Greek word for ‘lightning-flash’ in their variants, introducing a mythological 21 comparison to Στερόπης and the other two Hesiodic Cyclopes (Ἄργης ‘Bright’ Βρόντης ‘Thunderer’) as the manufacturers and donors of the thunder-bolt (Hes. Theog. 140–141, 501–506, cf. West 1966: 303–304) to suggest that the variants of ἀστραπή may possibly point an Indo-Europeanizing re-interpretation of borrowed non-Indo-European lexical material within the emerging cultural context of Greek mythology and poetics as a new folk-etymology that would have been more semantically transparent to early Greek speakers.

Literature:

Beekes, Robert S. P. 1987. Gr. (ἀ)στεροπή, ἀστραπή. Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 48. 15–20.
Beekes, Robert S. P. 2010. Etymological Dictionary of Greek. Leiden: Brill.
Buck, Carl Darling. 1949. A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mallory, James Patrick & Douglas Q. Adams. 1997. Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers.
Mayrhofer, Manfred. 1986. 2. Halbband: Lautlehre [Segementale Phonologie des Indogermanischen]. In: Indogermanische Grammatik. Band I: 1. Halbband: Einleitung. 2. Halbband: Lautlehre [Segmentale Phonologie des Indogermanischen], 73-216. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.
Peters, Martin. 1980. Untersuchungen zur Vertretung der indogermanischen Laryngale im Griechischen. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
West, Martin Litchfield. 1966. Hesiod: Theogony with Prolegomena and Commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.