brightness for a hundred autumns; may we live for a hundred autumns’
(ibid. 7. 66. 16, cf. 2. 18. 10; 3. 36. 10; 7. 101. 6; 10. 18. 4, 85. 39, 161. 2 f.; AV 3.
- 2–4). Varro thought that seclum (saeculum) ‘century’ was related to senex,
quod longissimum spatium senescendorum hominum id putarunt (De lingua
Latina 6. 11). He was wrong about the etymology, but saeculum does
originally seem to have meant ‘lifetime’, like its Welsh cognate hoedl. In an
eighth-century Irish hymn the hundred-year unit is compounded: ropo
chétach cétblíadnach, cech cét diib ar úair, ‘may I live a hundred times a
hundred years, each hundred of them in turn’. At Lithuanian christenings
there is a toast ‘may you live for the next hundred years’.^8
Certain texts attest the belief that some other creatures live vastly longer.
We noticed in Chapter 7 the ‘Hesiodic’ fragment according to which the crow
lives nine human generations, the stag four times as long as a crow, the raven
three times as long as a stag, the date-palm nine times as long as a raven, and
the Nymphs ten times as long as the date-palm. The verses were often quoted
in late antiquity and more than once rendered into Latin.^9 Classical influence
probably lies behind similar canons recorded since medieval times from
German, English, Irish, Scots Gaelic, and Portuguese written sources and
popular wisdom, for example the Irish teaching that man lives nine times
nine years, the deer three times as long as a man, the blackbird three times as
long as a deer, the eagle three times as long as a blackbird, the salmon three
times as long as an eagle, the yew three times as long as a salmon, and the
world three times as long as a yew (= 59,049 years).^10
However, neither Classical learning nor any other form of horizontal
transmission can account for the extraordinary parallel between another
Welsh text, the story of Culhwch and Olwen from the Mabinogion, and an
episode in the Maha ̄bha ̄rata.
In the Indian epic it is related that the royal seer Indradyumna fell from
heaven because no one any longer remembered his ancient fame. He asked
the aged Ma ̄rkan
̇
d
̇eya if he recognized him. Ma ̄rkan
̇d
̇eya did not, but advised
him that there was a certain owl in the Himalaya who was older than himself
and might know him. They went there. The owl said that he did not recognize
Indradyumna, but that there was a crane living by a certain lake who was yet
older. The owl accompanied them there. The crane too failed to identify the
stranger, but said there was a tortoise in the lake who was his senior and
(^8) Fer fio macc Fabri, ed. Kuno Meyer, University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature
2 (1916), 569–71= id., Miscellanea Hibernica (Urbana 1917), 19–21; Greimas (1992), 172.
Cf. Pl. Rep. 615a; Schulze (1966), 147 f.; Campanile (1990b), 75 f., 94; Watkins (1995), 350 f.
(^9) See R. Merkelbach–M. L. West, Fragmenta Hesiodea (Oxford 1967), 159.
(^10) E. Hull, Folk-Lore 43 (1932), 378–83; J. Weisweiler, ZCP 24 (1954), 172 f.
378 10. Mortality and Fame