The Seba library treats Hostis in 7 passages, across 4 authors (including Benveniste, Émile, Beekes, Robert, Vernant, Jean-Pierre).
si quando hostis advenit, aperta populatur, abdita autem
Benveniste cites Tacitus’s Germania to ground the semantic field of hostis as the arriving stranger-enemy whose presence triggers plunder, illustrating the term’s ambivalence between guest-right and threat.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973thesis
hostis, 489, 1034
The etymological index places hostis within a network of Latin cognates—including hospes and hortus—that collectively map the semantic domain of boundary, enclosure, and the management of the stranger.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting
the domestic group strengthens its ties and asserts its unity in consuming food forbidden to the stranger
Vernant shows how the hearth ritual structurally defines the stranger as excluded, providing the mythic-ritual counterpart to the legal ambivalence encoded in hostis.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
Poinḗ, which corresponds exactly to Av. kaēnā ‘vengeance, hate’ is the retribution that compensates for a murder. This also developed the emotional sense of ‘hate,’ of vengeance considered as a retribution
Benveniste traces the semantic field of hate and retribution through Indo-European cognates, providing the affective register that accompanies the breakdown of the guest-friendship relation encoded in hostis.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting
ξεινί-η [f.] ‘guest-friendship, guest-right’ (since w); ξεινοσύνη [f.] ‘hospitality’
The Greek xenia cluster, assembled here etymologically, illuminates the parallel Greek institution of guest-right whose Latin cognate hostis names, situating the term within the broader Indo-European hospitality complex.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting
an angry person is by definition seeking revenge, and hence out to do us harm
Konstan’s analysis of hatred as a structural emotion directed at those perceived as harmful provides the psychological corollary to the semantic shift encoded in hostis from guest-stranger to enemy.
, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, 2006aside
a band of the dead who once a year, led by their chief, return to the land of the living, and after devastating everything in their path vanish into the underworld
Benveniste’s discussion of the Wild Hunt and Wotan as lord of the furious dead supplies mythological depth to the hostis figure as the destructive stranger-army who crosses the threshold from outside.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973aside