9 Thou didst put to sleep Cumuri and Dhuni,
smash the Dasyu, assist Dabhı ̄ti;
even the (old man) with a stick found gold:
this Indra did exalted by the Soma.The best Avestan example of this style appears in the nineteenth Ya sˇt, in the
long mythical narrative about the history of the Kavi sovereignty. Part of it
came to the heroic Kərəsa ̄spa, ‘who overcame the horned, horse-devouring,
man-devouring, poisonous yellow monster ...; who killed Gandarəβa of the
yellow heel, that swooped with gaping maw to destroy the material world of
Truth; who killed the nine sons of Paθana, and the sons of Nivika, and the
sons of Da ̄sˇtaya ̄ni; who killed... (etc.)’ (Yt. 19. 40–3).
In Greek the technique of serial allusion is adapted to more than one
purpose. We have it in Zeus’ recital of his own amours in Il. 14. 317–27, and
in the passage of the Hymn to Apollo where the poet asks how he is to hymn
the god, πα ́ ντω εOυμνον $ο ́ ντα:
Shall I sing of you as a wooer and lover,
of how you went to court the Azantid maid
in rivalry with godlike Ischys, Elatos’ cavalier son,
or with Phorbas born of Triopas, or with Ereutheus,
or with Leucippus and Leucippus’ wife,
you on foot and he on chariot –– and he did not fall behind Triops?
Or of how first, in search of a place for your oracle for humankind,
you went over the earth, far-shooting Apollo? (208–15)The chorus of Euripides’Heracles, lamenting the (apparently) imminent
doom of Heracles’ family, with himself absent and no prospect of his return,
sings of his Labours in order, giving just a few lines to each:
Firstly he emptied Zeus’ grove of the Lion,
and putting its tawny head over his back wrapped himself
in the dread beast’s ruddy gape.
And one time the mountain-dwelling brood of wild Centaurs
he laid low with his deadly arrows, slaying them with his winged missiles:
fair-eddying Peneios is witness, and the wide untilled plains...
And by killing the gold-headed,
dapple-backed hind that preyed on the countryfolk
he brings lustre to the hunter goddess of Oenoe,and so on through the series (HF 359–435). As with Kərəsa ̄spa, it is not a god
but a mortal hero whose deeds are celebrated here. But the recital is intro-
duced rather formally as a praise-hymn, the chorus announcing that it pro-
poses to sing Heracles’ praises to crown his toils: $γd δC τ:ν γα
$νρων τ,- Hymns and Spells 315