The remaining Indo-European language in which we have texts from the
second millennium is Greek. However, these early, non-literary documents
in the Linear B script yield little that we can use. A far more rewarding
source for Indo-European inheritance is the corpus of Homeric and
Hesiodic poetry. Most of it was fixed in writing in the seventh century ,
but some of the material it contains, and the traditional language in which
it is expressed, have more ancient roots, reaching back at least into the
Mycenaean age. Next in importance are the lyric poets of the period
650–450. It is one of the latest of these (also the most extensively preserved),
the Boeotian Pindar, who has the greatest amount of interest to offer. Calvert
Watkins has called him ‘in many ways the most Indo-European of Greek
poets’.
The other languages of the Graeco-Aryan group are Phrygian and Arme-
nian. The Phrygian material is epigraphic, and comes from two separate
periods: from the eighth to the fourth century (Old Phrygian), and the
second to fourth century (New Phrygian). Some of the inscriptions are
metrical or contain metrical phrases, and certain formulae of elevated diction
are recognizable.^38 The literary attestation of Armenian begins after the
Christianization of the country in the fourth century. There are eight
fragments of pre-Christian oral verse on mythological and heroic themes,
preserved in quotation, and some other evidence of ancient beliefs.^39 Popular
oral heroic poetry survived into the twentieth century, and 1939 saw the
publication of a national ‘folk epic’Sassountsy David, put together from
poems transcribed from bardic recitations. It deals with the lives and adven-
tures of four generations of legendary kings who founded and ruled in the
city of Sassoun (now Sasun in Turkey). From the formal point of view this
Grossepos is an artificial construct, but the materials represent authentic oral
tradition.^40
For the ancient Thracian and Illyrian peoples the source material is
extremely scanty. It consists largely of personal and place names, a few glosses
from Classical sources, and one or two inscriptions. To these can be added a
larger body of inscriptions from south-east Italy in the Messapic language,
(^38) Texts are collected by Haas (1966); Claude Brixhe and Michel Lejeune, Corpus des
inscriptions paléo-phrygiennes, i–ii (Paris 1984); Vladimir Orel, The Language of Phrygians.
Description and Analysis (New York 1997).
(^39) Collected and translated by L. H. Gray, Revue des Études Arméniennes 6 (1926), 159–67.
See also J. R. Russell, ibid. [new series] 20 (1986/7), 253–70; id., Acta Antiqua 32 (1989),
317–30; Ishkol-Kerovpian (1986).
(^40) Cf. C. M. Bowra, Heroic Poetry (London 1952), 357. I cite the work by page from the
translation by A. K. Shalian, David of Sassoun (Athens, Ohio, 1964).
Introduction 15