Hell
Hell, in many religious and folkloric traditions, is a place of torment and punishment in the afterlife. Hell appears in several mythologies and religions. It is commonly inhabited by demons and the souls of dead people.
Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as eternal destinations while religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations.
Typically these traditions locate hell in another dimension or under the Earth’s surface and often include entrances to Hell from the land of the living. Other afterlife destinations include Heaven, Purgatory, Paradise, and Limbo.
Other traditions, which do not conceive of the afterlife as a place of punishment or reward, merely describe Hell as an abode of the dead, the grave, a neutral place located under the surface of Earth.
The modern English word hell is derived from Old English hel, helle (first attested around 725 AD to refer to a nether world of the dead) reaching into the Anglo-Saxon pagan period, and ultimately from Proto-Germanic *halja, meaning “one who covers up or hides something”.
This Germanic word also gave rise to similar forms in other Germanic languages, such as Old Frisian helle, hille, Old Saxon hellia, Middle Dutch helle (modern Dutch hel), Old High German helle (Modern German Hölle), Danish, Norwegian and Swedish hel and helvede/helvete (hel + Old Norse víti, “punishment” whence the Icelandic víti “hell”), and Gothic halja.
The Germanic word comes from an Indo-European root to do with hiding, with Indo-European cognates including Latin cēlāre (“to hide”, related to the English word “cellar”) and early Irish ceilid (“hides”). Subsequently, the word was used to denote a concept in Christian theology.
Some have theorized that English word hell is derived from Old Norse hel. However, this is very unlikely as hel appears in Old English before the Viking invasions. Furthermore, the word has cognates in all the other Germanic languages and has a Proto-Germanic origin.
Among other sources, the Poetic Edda, compiled from earlier traditional sources in the 13th century, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, provide information regarding the beliefs of the Norse pagans, including a being named Hel, who is described as ruling over an underworld location of the same name.
Helvetii
The Helvetii (Latin: Helvētiī; anglicized Helvetians) were a Gallic tribe or tribal confederation occupying most of the Swiss plateau at the time of their contact with the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC. Posidonius described the Helvetians of the late 2nd century BC as “rich in gold but peaceful,” without giving clear indication to the location of their territory.
In his Natural History (c. 77 AD), Pliny provides a foundation myth for the Celtic settlement of Cisalpine Gaul in which a Helvetian named Helico plays the role of culture hero. Helico had worked in Rome as a craftsman and then returned to his home north of the Alps with a dried fig, a grape, and some oil and wine, the desirability of which caused his countrymen to invade northern Italy.
The Helvetians were subjugated after 52 BC, and under Augustus, Celtic oppida, such as Vindonissa or Basilea, were re-purposed as garrisons. In AD 68, a Helvetian uprising was crushed by Aulus Caecina Alienus. The Swiss plateau was at first incorporated into the Roman province of Gallia Belgica (22 BC), later into Germania Superior (AD 83).
The Helvetians, like the rest of Gaul, were largely Romanized by the 2nd century. In the later 3rd century, Roman control over the region waned, and the Swiss plateau was exposed to the invading Alemanni. The Alemanni and Burgundians established permanent settlements in the Swiss plateau in the 5th and 6th centuries, resulting in the early medieval territories of Alemannia (Swabia) and Upper Burgundy.
The endonym Helvetii is mostly derived from a Gaulish elu-, meaning “gain, prosperity” or “multitude”, cognate with Welsh elw and Old Irish prefix il-, meaning “many” or “multiple” (from the PIE root *pelh1u- “many”). The second part of the name has sometimes been interpreted as *etu-, “terrain, grassland”, thus interpreting the tribal name as “rich in land”.
The earliest attestation of the name is found in a graffito on a vessel from Mantua, dated to c. 300 BC. The inscription in Etruscan letters reads eluveitie, which has been interpreted as the Etruscan form of the Celtic elu̯eti̯os (“the Helvetian”), presumably referring to a man of Helvetian descent living in Mantua.