As you guys may remember, I was very excited in class to learn that the word catamite came from Ganymede. I looked into this further after class, and apparently the word comes through the Etruscans, who had gotten the (alternate?) form Gadymede and changed all the consonants, making it catemete, and the Romans got it from them, and changed the vowels.
I also looked into Ulixes/Odysseus, which is also weird. Apparently, Odysseus is just one possible variant of the name even in Greek, which also had Olysseus, and both are believed to be derived from Olykios (or even Olixes), which would be the origin of the Roman version as well. It is interesting that Odysseus has been preserved almost solely for the Greek name, while the earlier version is preserved in the Roman name.
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