It is Greek in origin
See my [link|http://promo.net/pg/vol/greek.html|Greek primer] at Gutenberg. "ae" is representative of the Greek letter eta. Pronunciation is up for grabs--tending to be polarized around famous dead-language professors in different parts of the world, mostly the U.S., Germany and England. I use the long-a sound, as in "day".
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A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of their own ideas;...despair and time eat away the bonds of iron and steel, but they are powerless against the habitual union of ideas, they can only tighten it still more; and on the soft fibres of the brain is founded the unshakable base of the soundest of Empires."
Jacques Servan, 1767