Indo-European Poetry and Myth

‘huge, monstrous’ (Il. 3. 166, 229, al.), and this adjective is sometimes applied to other heroes too, including Hector and Achi ...

corn without bending them,^56 and another who can see over vast distances.^57 The Welsh examples come in a long list of Arthur’s ...

keen eyes marked him out as a warrior on the first day of his life; he was already standing up in a cuirass.^60 The fair or yell ...

after that. Artemis and Athena marvelled at him, that he killed deer without hounds or nets, by outrunning them’ (Pind. Nem. 3. ...

the overcoming of several beasts of familiar species but unique notoriety: the Nemean Lion, the Cerynian Hind, the Erymanthian B ...

cially –– when it is an opponent in battle, he is asked his identity and lineage.^67 Achilles demands of Asteropaios, τ πο ́ θ ...

‘It is one of two things: either thou art a man from afar or thou art a fool.’^69 We can hardly infer on this slender basis that ...

ation.^71 But these are not all of equal interest for the purposes of heroic narrative. It prefers an element of contest, of dif ...

quite similar to those employed in the Indian epics.^74 For reasons given below, however, I hesitate to conclude that the archer ...

him she says ‘The dream I dreamed has now put up its head out of the void’, and she goes and adorns his head with her coronet.^7 ...

variant that has the wider distribution –– India, Greece, Latvia, Germany –– and the stronger claim to represent a common Indo-E ...

Danish story of King Gorm the Old, who married the English princess Thyra, the daughter of Ethelred. She insisted on three days’ ...

husbands, in the case of the polyandrous Draupadı ̄ in the Maha ̄bha ̄rata) must go in pursuit and recover her by force of arms. ...

re-establish his position in the changed situation. Sometimes he is conveyed home with extraordinary swiftness by a supernatural ...

from a similar source. This is in accord with the importance of the bow, the composite bow that requires great strength for its ...

The theme is most familiar to many English readers from Matthew Arnold’s famous narrative poem Sohrab and Rustum, which is based ...

Modifications of the basic theme appear in Armenian and Ossetic tradition. In the Armenian epic David unknowingly fights his son ...

Harpagus; whether this is genuinely Iranian material we do not know. The motif reappears in several other Greek myths, such as t ...

In real life your best chance of disposing of a formidable fighting man would be to surprise him in circumstances when he was es ...

A method that enjoyed greater international recognition was to bury the obstinate brave under a mass of earth or stones. The Lap ...