Thus Montezuma, when he built a temple in the city of Mexico dedicated to the whole body of divinities, a regular Pantheon, named it _Coatecalli_, the House of the Serpent.[1] [Footnote 1: "Coatecalli, que quiere decir el _templo de la culebra_, que sin metafora quiere decir _templo de diversos dioses_." Duran, _Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espana_, cap.

LVIII.] Through these various meanings a good defence can be made of several different translations of the name, and probably it bore even to the natives different meanings at different times.

I am inclined to believe that the original sense was that advocated by Becerra in the seventeenth century, and adopted by Veitia in the eighteenth, both competent Aztec scholars.[1] They translate Quetzalcoatl as "the admirable twin," and though their notion that this refers to Thomas Didymus, the Apostle, does not meet my views, I believe they were right in their etymology.

The reference is to the duplicate nature of the Light-God as seen in the setting and rising sun, the sun of to-day and yesterday, the same yet different.

This has its parallels in many other mythologies.[2] [Footnote 1: Becerra, _Felicidad de Mejico_, 1685, quoted in Veitia, _Historia del Origen de las Gentes que poblaron la America Septentrional_, cap.