This dichotomy probably reflects a reality of ancient societies. In the
Roman war with the Sabines the kings of the two peoples were Romulus and
Tatius, but the armies were led by Hostius Hostilius and Mettius Curtius.
Strabo (4. 4. 3) writes that most of the Gallic polities in the pre-Roman age
used to elect a chief (]γεμ.ν) annually, and likewise one war commander
would be chosen by the people. The two functions were separate. Tacitus
reports of the Germans:
Reges ex nobilitate, duces ex uirtute sumunt... et duces exemplo potius quam
imperio, si prompti, si conspicui, si ante aciem agant, admiratione praesunt.
They choose their kings for nobility, their war-leaders for uirtus... and the war-
leaders are more admired for their conduct than their authority, for being bold and
prominent and going out in front of the line (Germ. 7).
KINGS‘Kings’ have yet to be defined. Historical Indo-European societies had rulers
of different kinds at different times, but in their earliest phases the normal
pattern everywhere was that one man was acknowledged as the ruler of a
larger or smaller domain. Various titles are attested, most of them confined
to a single language or language group, even where they have intelligible
Indo-European etymologies. A couple are supra-regional. The Mycenaean
and Greek wanak(t)- (also in Phrygian, but perhaps as an early loan from
Greek) has a possible cognate in Tocharian A na ̄täk‘lord’. The reconstructed
prototype is *w(n
̊
)natk-, an odd-looking word that may be of non-Indo-
European origin.^2
The original MIE terms for ‘king’ and ‘queen’ are reconstructed from Indo-
Iranian and Celtic evidence.^3 Vedic ra ̄ ́jñı ̄ and Old Irish rígain‘queen’ both go
back to *(H)re ̄ ́gˆn
̊
ih 2 ; this should be the counterpart of a masculine (H)re ̄ ́gˆ-o ̄/
(H)re ̄gˆn-, which duly appears as Vedic ra ̄ ́jan- ‘king’, and perhaps in Greek
qρηγ.ν‘defender’. These nouns were derived from the verbal root *(H)regˆ,
seen in Vedic ra ̄ ́s
̇
t
̇i/ra ̄ ́jati‘rules, directs’, Latin rego‘I draw straight, regulate,
rule’, Gaulish regu‘I straighten’, Old Irish rigid‘stretches; directs; rules’.^4
There also existed verbal rection compounds with -(H)re ̄gˆ- as the second
element, meaning ‘-ruling, -ruler’. From these, Italo-Celtic (and perhaps
to a limited extent Indo-Iranian) abstracted a free-standing (H)re ̄ ́gˆ- which
(^2) Cf. Gamkrelidze–Ivanov (1995), 654 f.; EIEC 329.
(^3) Following the analysis of K. McCone, Ériu 49 (1998), 1–12.
(^4) More in Kretschmer (1896), 126; IEW 854–7; EIEC 187a.
412 11. King and Hero