[Meaning] old, that is, most/very foolish. It is formed from prose/lhne. For they called the Arcadians prose/lhnoi ["before the moon"] because they claimed to be the oldest [people] and to have arisen before the moon. So bekese/lhne [is] like prose/lhne. But also bekese/lhne by itself is derived from a story like this. When Psammetikhos became king of the Egyptians, he wanted to know which of all men were the eldest and arose first. But as even after much investigation he was not able to find out the accurate truth because many were contentious in this matter, he devised something like this. Taking two newborn infants he shut them up in a house absolutely isolated. And some say that he sent she-goats to them, which suckled and nourished the infants; others say that he assigned wet-nurses, cutting out their tongues so that the infants would not hear their voices. Psammetikhos did this because he wanted to know what sound the children would first utter, apart from meaningless whimpering. So as the third year passed of this form of nurture, he sent into the house one of his closest friends bidding him go by in silence. But when he opened the doors, stretching out their hands the children called out "bekos." The Phrygians call bread by this name. And so Psammetikhos found and felt confident that the Phrygians had arisen first. But if the first story is true, that goats nursed the children and not a woman, it is no wonder that hearing the goat they imitated her voice, and it is a coincidence that such an expression occurs among the Phrygians. Thus then bekese/lhne indicates that which is old, the expression being compounded from be/kos, according to the story which has been told, and from prose/lhne, because the Arcadians were called "before the moon" [prose/lhnoi].