be fed to the gods’ horses; they too need to be immortal. Mithra’s steeds
likewise ‘are immortal, having been reared on supernatural food
(mainyusˇ. xvarəθa)’.^127
Ambrosia is often coupled with νκταρ‘nectar’, which in Homer is con-
sistently liquid, though other poets occasionally speak of the gods eating it.^128
According to a widely (though not universally) accepted etymology, the word
is to be analysed as *ne-tr
̊
h 2 , ‘getting across (i.e. overcoming) (premature)
death’. This has some support in Vedic idiom, where the verb tar is used of
overcoming obstacles and opponents, including in one passage death: AV 4.
- 1 tara ̄n
̇
i mr
̇tyúm, ‘I will overcome death’.^129
Where do the gods obtain their wonderful food that is inaccessible to us?
Circe tells Odysseus that ambrosia is brought to Zeus by a flight of doves from
a remote source beyond the Clashing Rocks. One of the birds is always caught
by the rocks as they slam together, but Zeus supplies another to make up the
number.^130 We recognize here a version of the widespread folk-tale motif that
the elixir of life is located on the far side of a narrow portal that closes behind
the traveller to prevent his return, so that one might get to the elixir but not
bring it back to the world of men.^131
According to Indian texts too the divine Soma was difficult to get at. It was
‘enclosed between two golden bowls. At every twinkling of the eye they closed
shut with sharp edges’ (S ́B 3. 6. 2. 9). In another account it had in front of it
‘an iron wheel with a honed edge and sharp blades, which ran incessantly,
bright like fire and sun, the murderous cutting edge for the robbers of the
Elixir’; and behind the wheel were two large and fearsome snakes keeping
guard over the precious fluid (MBh. 1. 29. 2–6).
In the Rigveda there are many allusions to the story that the Soma was
brought to Indra from the furthest heaven by an eagle or falcon. In the most
(^127) Il. 5. 369, 777, 13. 35; Yt. 10. 125, trs. Gershevitch; the parallel noted by Durante (1976),
55.
(^128) The texts are inconsistent about whether ambrosia is eaten or drunk. See West (1966),
342.
(^129) P. Thieme in Schmitt (1968), 102–12; Schmitt (1967), 46–8, 186–92; id. in Mayrhofer et al.
(1974), 155–63; Gamkrelidze–Ivanov (1995), 721 f.; Watkins (1995), 391–3; Bader (1989), 192 n.
5; R. Lazzeroni, La cultura indoeuropea (Rome–Bari 1998), 9, 65–8, 70–5. Criticized by E. Risch,
Gnomon 41 (1969), 325.
(^130) Od. 12. 62–5. There are traces of related ideas elsewhere in Greek poetry. Euripides, Hipp.
748, imagines ‘ambrosial springs’ in the far west, by Atlas and the Hesperides; pace Barrett, he
surely means something more than divine water-springs. Moiro, fr. 1. 3–6 Powell, describes the
infant Zeus being nourished in the Cretan cave on ambrosia that doves brought to him from
Oceanus and on nectar that an eagle brought him from a rocky source.
(^131) E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (4th edn., London 1903), i. 347–50; P. Friedländer, Rh. Mus.
69 (1914), 302 n. 2; A. B. Cook, Zeus (Cambridge 1914–40), iii(2). 976–9; Stith Thompson,
Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Helsinki 1932–4), F 91. 1, 152. 2, 156. 4.
158 3. Gods and Goddesses