of which now reaches heaven’, cf. Od. 8. 74, 9. 20, 19. 108; Ar. Nub. 461 κλο
ο1ρανο ́ μηκε, ‘heaven-high fame’.^102
The durability of fame is expressed by calling it ‘unfading’, ‘undying’, or
‘unageing’. We will take first the famous parallelism of áks
̇
iti s ́rávah
̇(RV 1. 40.
4; 8. 103. 5; 9. 66. 7) or s ́rávo... áks
̇
itam (1. 9. 7) and κλο Eφθιτον.^103 The
Greek phrase occurs once in Homer, in the passage about Achilles’ choice of
destinies cited above: it is what he will have if he stays at Troy. It is also what
Ibycus promises Polycrates through the medium of his own lyrics, subject
to their durability. The phrase appears further in a Hesiodic fragment, in
Sappho, and in one literary and three epigraphic epitaphs.^104 It has been
attractively argued that a Mycenaean woman’s name written A-qi-ti-ta (MY
Oe 103, KN Ap 639. 12) is to be read as Aktita ̄, and that this must be a short
name derived from a long compound one such as *Aktitokleweyya.^105
The verbal root ks
̇
i/φθι (*dhgwhi) meant ‘perish, fade, fail’. Of the two
alternative Vedic forms found with s ́rávah
̇
, áks
̇iti- and áks
̇ita-, the first com-
bines the negative prefix with the feminine i-stem noun ks
̇
íti-, corresponding
to Greek φθσι, while the second combines it with participial ks
̇
itó-. The
first is perhaps the more archaic type,^106 but both are clearly old, and it is
the second that exactly matches Greek Eφθιτο. In its application to fame it
may have been a metaphor from an unfailing spring, as in both languages
the word is used with that reference: RV 1. 64. 6, 8. 7. 16 útsam... áks
̇
itam
‘the unfailing spring’; 10. 101. 6 avatám... áks
̇
itam; Hes. Th. 805 Στυγ:
Eφθιτον δωρ ‘Styx’s unfailing water’. The variant formula Eσβεστον
κλο (Od. 4. 584, 7. 333) can be understood in the same way, as
σβννυσθαι is sometimes used of liquid flows drying up, and Simonides’
phrase qναον κλο‘ever-flowing fame’ (PMG 531. 9) is a similar image.
In the Maha ̄bha ̄rata we find instead of aks
̇
ita- the younger form aks
̇aya-,
and instead of s ́ravas-,kı ̄rti- or yas ́as-. But the one continues to be predicated
of the other: aks
̇
aya ̄ tava kı ̄rtis ́ ca loko stha ̄syati ‘your fame will stand(^102) Schmitt (1967), 73 n. 442. Cf. Simon. eleg. 11. 27 [φα ́ τι δ, #χε]ν ο1ρανομ
(^103) A. Kuhn, ZVS 2 (1853), 467 (noted en passant); Wackernagel (1943), 16; Schmitt (1967),·[ κ]·η.
61–9; Gregory Nagy, Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter (Cambridge, Mass. 1974);
Durante (1976), 8 f.; E. D. Floyd, Glotta 58 (1980), 133–57 (with careful analysis of the Vedic
contexts, 135–8); M. Finkelberg, CQ 36 (1986), 1–5; E. Risch, ZVS 100 (1987), 3–11;
A. T. Edwards, CQ 38 (1988), 25–30; Nagy (1990), 122–7; Campanile (1990b), 87–9; Watkins
(1995), 173–8; K. Volk, Classical Philology 97 (2002), 61–8.
(^104) Il. 9. 413; Ibycus, PMGF S151. 47; ‘Hes.’ fr. 70. 5; Sapph. 44. 4; CEG 344. 2 (Phocis, c.600–
550); CEG 2(ii). 1 (Athens, after 480); GVI 904. 2 (Rhodes, Hellenistic). Several later examples
are collected by K. Volk (as n. 103), 63 f. Cf. also Thgn. 245 f., where the words are divided
between two clauses, but the reference is again, as in Ibycus, to posthumous fame conferred by
poetry.
(^105) E. Risch, ZVS 100 (1987), 9–11; questioned by Campanile (1990b), 105.
(^106) Schulze (1966), 258 n. 3.
408 10. Mortality and Fame