Indo-European Poetry and Myth

Hdt. 7. 220. 4 βουλο ́ μενον κλο καταθσθαι μονον Σπαρτιητων, ‘(Leonidas)
wishing to establish glory for himself alone of the Spartans’, cf. 9. 78. 2.^69
In Greek epic the typical subject matter of bards’ songs is summed up as
κλα qνδρ;ν, ‘fames of men’, that is, their famous exploits.^70 This use of the
plural is paralleled in Vedic, where the plural s ́ráva ̄m
̇

si is three times used of
the ‘glorious deeds’ of Indra (RV 3. 30. 5, 37. 7; as the subject of eulogy, 8. 99.
2). The achievements of human heroes are not the concern of the Rigveda,
but Indra is often praised in terms suitable to a human hero; he is called a
nr ́
̇

or vı ̄rá-, ‘a (real) man’, he is nr

̇

mánas-‘man-spirited’,nr ́

̇

tama-‘most
manly’, his exploits are vı ̄ríya ̄n
̇

i. Oral epic about human heroes must have
existed, and it would have been appropriate to refer to their famous deeds as
s ́ráva ̄m
̇

si nara ̄ ́m (or nr

̇

na ̄ ́m), even if we cannot document the phrase.^71
A similar Old Irish expression may be quoted from the so-called Book of
the Dun Cow (Lebor na hUidre, 10272): comba luiet mo gníma eter clothaib
neirt n-erred, ‘so that my deeds may count among the famous exploits of
chariot-warriors’, literally ‘the fames of prowess of chariot-warriors’.^72

Names

One’s fame is inseparable from one’s name. Someone achieving fame
‘makes a name for himself ’. The Vedic phrase s ́rútiyam
̇

na ̄ ́ma‘famous name’
(RV 5. 30. 5) is matched by Greek Zνομα κλυτο ́ ν (Od. 9. 364, 19. 183). One
is ‘famed by name’: RV 8. 46. 14 Índram
̇

na ̄ ́ma s ́rútiyam, in Homer Zνομα
κλυτο ́  (or %νομα ́ κλυτο). Tocharian has the compound ‘name-fame’
(Añom-klyu, B ñem-kälywe).^73
The naming of a child was a solemn event, performed on the tenth day of
its life.^74 A series of languages agree in using their reflexes of the phrase
*h 3 néh 3 mn
̊

dheh 1 (with dative) for the act of bestowing the name: Hittite

(^69) More in Schmitt (1967), 71; Gamkrelidze–Ivanov (1995), 732. Also with the preverb pári,
περ: RV 5. 18. 4 s ́ráva ̄m
̇
si dadhire pári, Simon. epigr. 9. 1 Page Eσβεστον κλο ο δε φληι
περ? πατρδι θντε.
(^70) Il. 9. 189, 524, Od. 8. 73; Hes. Th. 100 κλε4α προτρων qνθρ.πων.
(^71) F. Specht, ZVS 64 (1937), 1 = Schmitt (1968), 49, cited RV 5. 18. 5 máhi s ́ravo (singular)...
maghóna ̄m ... nr
̇
na ̄ ́m and also the collocation nara ̄ ́m
̇
s ́ámsa-, nára ̄s ́ám
̇
sa-, ‘praise of men’, but
these are semantically dissimilar. Cf. Schmitt (1967), 29 f., 93–101; Durante (1976), 50 f.
(^72) Meid (1978), 20 n. 20. Clothaib is the dative plural of cloth < lutóm. The word is often
used in the plural in the sense of ‘tidings’.
(^73) Durante (1962), 32 ~ (1976), 95; Schmitt (1967), 55 f., 90–3; Watkins (1995), 65; W. Meid
inMír Curad 477–81. On the equivalence of lewes- and name cf. Campanile (1990b), 89–91.
(^74) Feist (1913), 301 f.; K. A. Eckhardt, Irdische Unsterblichkeit (Weimar 1937), i. 92–4;
R. Schmitt in Ernst Eichler et al. (edd.), Namenforschung, i (Berlin–New York 1995), 616.
398 10. Mortality and Fame