‘It is one of two things: either thou art a man from afar or thou art a fool.’^69
We can hardly infer on this slender basis that wayfarers’ enquiries in Eurostan
were liable to provoke the same bluff response, but the coincidence is worthy
of remark.
THE HERO AND WOMENAlthough quite able to appreciate female beauty when he encounters it, the
Indo-European warrior hero is not generally much interested in sex or
involved with women.^70 He is mostly represented as unmarried; his raison
d’être is competition with other males, and while women’s intrigues may
sometimes condition the events in which he plays a part, it can only detract
from the atomic ferocity of his heroic persona if he is represented with a wife
sharing his daily life. Richard Strauss could cast himself as the central figure
both of a Sinfonia Domestica and of Ein Heldenleben, but it is not a convincing
conjunction.
Many readers will think of Hector and his anxious, loving wife. But the
Homeric epic has evolved to an exceptional level of sophistication and tasteful
artistry; the characters are fleshed out with all kinds of realistic human detail
to a degree unparalleled in other ancient traditions, and a figure such as
Hector the family man is the product of this process. As ultimate hero he
is outclassed by Achilles.
Yet a woman can have a functional (as opposed to a merely decorative or
palliative) role in a hero’s life, namely when she provides the motive for him
to demonstrate his prowess. There are essentially two situations in which this
is the case: when he seeks to win her as a bride, or when he seeks to win her
back after an enforced separation.
Winning a brideThe Indo-Europeans probably recognized several forms of marriage, for
example by priestly ceremonial, by capture, by cohabitation, or by negoti-
(^69) Od. 9. 273 = 13. 237; Historia Peredur vab Efrawc p. 53. 4 Goetinck, ‘mae y neill peth; ae tydi
yn wr o bell, ae titheu yn ynuyt’.
(^70) Noted by Miller (2000), 109 f., who speaks of ‘the old notion that abstention from sex
provides the ingathering of powers necessary to the successful fighter, which is widely current in
the belief systems or traditions of many warrior societies’.
432 11. King and Hero