Indo-European Poetry and Myth

4

Sky and Earth

THE DIVINE SKY

There is one Indo-European god whose name we can trace across a vast area,
from India to Italy. Its original form is reconstructed as *D(i)yéus. Its archaic
system of declension is reflected most clearly in the parallel case-forms of
Vedic and Greek:

Various forms of the name are recognizable in Phrygian Tiy-,^1 Thracian Zi-,
Diu-, Dias-, etc. (in personal names),^2 Messapic Zis or Dis.^3 In Latin the
simple form is almost restricted to the oblique cases Iouis (older Diouis),
etc., but the old nominative is preserved in the name of the specialized deity
Diu ̄s Fidius. The usual nominative is supplied by the originally vocative com-
poundIup(p)iter, ‘father (D)iu ̄ s’, but another nominative form, Diespiter,
survived beside it in old and poetic Latin.^4 Other Italic languages too
have agglutinations of the ancient name with ‘father’; compare the genitive
Dipoteres on a fifth-century  Sabellian amphora, Marrucinian Ioues patres

MIE Vedic Greek
Nom. D(i)yéus D(i)yáus Ζε3
Voc. D(í)yeu D(í)yaus Ζευ



Acc. *D(i)ye ̄ ́m D(i)ya ́ ̄m (Dívam) Ζη


ν (∆fα)
Gen. Diwós Divás ∆ιfο ́ 
Dat. Diwéi Divé ∆ιfε (Myc. di-we)
Loc. *Dyéwi/Diwí Dyávi/Diví ∆ιf

(^1) Haas (1966), 67, 86, 143; A. Lubotsky, Kadmos 28 (1989), 84 f.; id. in Gusmani et al. (1997),
127; C. Brixhe, ibid. 42–7.
(^2) Kretschmer (1896), 241; I. Duridanov in Meid (1998), 562.
(^3) Krahe (1955–64), i. 86; Haas (1962), 16, 171, 177.
(^4) On the relationship of the forms see K. Strunk in Serta Indogermanica (Festschr. für
G. Neumann; Innsbruck 1982), 427–38.