This motif is also at home in poetic contests. In the Certamen Homeri et
Hesiodi Homer is challenged to answer the questions ‘what is best for mor-
tals?’ and ‘what is finest for mortals?’ (7), and again ‘what is finest for mortals
and what is worst?’ and ‘how would cities best be run?’ ‘What is the best thing
to pray to the gods for?’ ‘What best thing grows in smallest space?’ (11). In the
Hesiodic Melampodia Melampous was probably asked ‘what is the pleasantest
thing?’ and answered ‘it is pleasant to... And it is also pleasant to...
But pleasantest of all is.. .’ (cf. frs. 273–4). The lake demon’s testing of
Yudhis
̇
t
̇hira contains several such questions (MBh. 3. 279. 36, 52, 54). In
Gylfaginning (2 f.) king Gylfi’s interrogation of the three presidents of
Valhalla is introduced as a contest of learning, and his first question is ‘who
is the best or eldest of the gods?’
Elsewhere we find such wisdom offered apodeictically, without the
preceding question:
Thefinest thing is what’s most right; the best is health;
the nicest is to get the thing one craves.
(Thgn. 255 f., cf. 425–8; PMG 890)
Fire is best among the sons of men,
and the sight of the sun;
his health, if a man is able to have it;
living without disgrace. (Hávamál 68)
Wind is the swiftest thing in the air,
thunder at times is the loudest...
Fate is strongest, winter is coldest,
spring frostiest –– it is longest cold,
summer sunniest, etc. (Old English Maxims B 3–11)
Night is the darkest of weathers, necessity is the hardest of fates,
sorrow is the heaviest burden, sleep is the likest to death.
(Solomon and Saturn B 134 f.)ProverbsThe Indo-Europeans, like other peoples, no doubt had much popular wisdom
encapsulated in proverbs. It is doubtful, however, whether we can reconstruct
any of it. It is not difficult to find examples of corresponding proverbs in
different branches of the Indo-European tradition. But, to say nothing of the
possibilities of independent creation, proverbs travel easily across borders,
and one may often find just as good parallels in Arabic or Turkish.
Some proverbs current in modern Western languages can be traced back
to Classical literature. There is a striking match between what Sophocles’
Ajax quotes as a proverb, $χθρ;ν Eδωρα δ;ρα, and the Danish proverb
362 9. Cosmos and Canon