Τροφή, Trophe (food or nourishment), formed Τρόφιμος, Trophimos (the fruitful or nourishing), the name of an old Greek sculptor, and afterwards of the Ephesian companion of St. Paul who was left sick at Miletus. The people at Arles consider that he afterwards preached the Gospel in their city, and have made him the patron of their cathedral; but it is Russia that continues the use of his name as Trofeem.[[38]]
Even among the heathen Greeks, Τρυφή, Tryphe (daintiness, softness, or delicacy), had not a respectable signification. Yet Τρύφον, or Tryphon, was a favourite with persons of inferior rank—artists, architects, and physicians; and in the Decian persecution, a martyr so called was put to the extremity of torture in Bithynia, and has remained highly honoured in the calendar of the Greek Church; Trypho continuing in use as a Russian name.
The feminine form, Τρυφαίνα (Tryphæna), was given to two of the daughters of the Ptolemys in Egypt, where it was far from inappropriate; but, probably, the two women whom St. Paul greets so honourably at Rome as Tryphæna and Tryphosa, were either Alexandrian Jewesses whom he had met at Corinth on their way to Rome, or else merely so called as being the daughters of some Tryphon. They were not canonized, and the dainty Tryphæna has only been revived in England by the Puritan taste.
Section IX.—Names connected with the Constitution.—Laos, &c.
The democratic Greeks delighted in names connected with their public institutions—ἀγορά (agora), the assembly, δῆμος (dêmos), the public, λαός, also the people, gave them numerous names, with which were closely connected the formations from δίκη (dike), justice, and κλέος (kleos), fame.
Λαοδάμας (Laodamas), people-tamer, had a feminine Λαοδάμεια[Λαοδάμεια] (Laodameia), principally noted for the beautiful legend of her bitter grief for her husband, the first to fall at Troy, having recalled him to earth for three hours under the charge of Hermes. Probably Florence must have had a local saint named Laodamia, for it has continued in vogue there.
The demos better answered to the commons; they expressed less the general populace than the whole voting class of free citizens, and were more select. We find them often at the beginning or end of Greek names, like the Theut of the Teutons: Demodokos, people’s teacher; Demoleon, people’s lion; Nikodemos, conquering people, etc.
Κλέος (Kleos), fame, from κλείω (kleio), to call, had as many derivatives as the Frank hlod, or loud, for renowned, but most of them have passed out of use, though Κλεάνθης (Kleanthes), famous bloom, the name of a celebrated sculptor, so struck the fancy of the French that Cleanthe—their epicene form—was one of the favourite soubriquets for their portraits of living characters. Even Cleopatra (Κλεοπάτρα[Κλεοπάτρα]), fame of her father, with all her beauty and fame, did not hand on the name which she had received in common with a long course of daughters of Egypto-Greek kings. Russia alone accepts it as a frequent Christian name, and it is occasionally to be found in England and America.
The wreath of the conqueror was an appropriate allusion to those games where the Greek youth delighted to contend, and very probably the first Stephanos (Στέφανος) was so called by an exulting family whose father had returned with the parsley, or pine-leaf, crown upon his brow, and named the infant in honour of the victory. For Stephanos was an old Greek name, which had belonged among others to a son of Thucydides, before it came to that Hellenist deacon who first of all achieved the greatest of all the victories, and won the crown.
Besides St. Stephen’s own day, another on the 3rd of August for “the invention of St. Stephen’s relics,” which were pointed out in a dream to a priest of Caphargamala in the year 415, by no less a person than the Jewish doctor, Gamaliel, in a white robe, covered with plates of gold. The bones were carried to the church on Mount Sion, and thence dispersed into all quarters; even St. Augustin rejoiced in receiving a portion at Hippo, other fragments were taken to the Balearic Isles, while Ancona laid claim to the possession of a bone, carried off at the time of the saint’s martyrdom!