one that would have occurred naturally to the earliest pastoralists. It is found
already in the Rigveda (9. 110. 9), of Soma: ‘as in greatness, Clarified One,
(you are) above these two worlds and all beings, you stand forth outstanding
like a bull in the herd’. The reader of Homer will recall the picture of
Agamemnon in Il. 2. 480–3:
As a bull in the herd stands out far above all,
for he is conspicuous among the gathering of the cows,
that is how Zeus made Atreus’ son that day,
conspicuous and outstanding among the many warriors.Another simile from the animal world, shared by Indians and Greeks,
is perhaps much less ancient. Duryodhana, denouncing Vidura, says ‘like a
snake we took you into our embrace’ (MBh. 2. 57. 3). The same image is
found in the Ra ̄ma ̄yan
̇
a (2. 7. 23): ‘he is like a viper, child, whom you have
taken to your bosom and lovingly mothered’. In Greek it appears in the
Theognidea (601 f.), though not quite in the true form:
#ρρε θεο4σν τ’$χθρC κα? α, νθρ.ποισιν Eπιστε,
ψυχρ:ν i $ν κο ́ λπωι ποικλον εjχε Zφιν.
To hell with you, whom gods abhor and men can’t trust,
who held in your bosom a cold and cunning snake.Sintenis plausibly proposed reading ψυχρ:ν iν ... εjχον, so that the sense
becomes ‘whom I held in my bosom as a cold and cunning snake’. This brings
the verse into line with the logical sense and with the Aesopic fable of a man
who found a viper that was nearly dead with cold and warmed it in his
bosom; once revived, it bit him and he died.^79 Now, it seems quite possible
that a version of the fable, like many other animal fables, came to India from
the west at a comparatively late date. A form of it appears in the Pañcatantra
(2 st. 17, trs. P. Olivelle): ‘Yet a bad man inspires no confidence, because of his
evil disposition, like a snake asleep in one’s own bosom.’ If so, the fable,
rather than a common Graeco-Aryan tradition, may have been the source of
the image in the Indian epics.
When Penelope is at last persuaded that it is Odysseus who stands before
her, she is overcome by tears;
and as when the land is welcome when it comes into view of swimmers
whose sturdy ship Poseidon has smashed in the sea...
and gladly they make land and escape hardship,
so welcome was her husband to her as she looked on him.(^79) Aesop. Fab. 176 Perry; Babrius 143.
98 2. Phrase and Figure