Indo-European Poetry and Myth

from a similar source. This is in accord with the importance of the bow, the
composite bow that requires great strength for its stringing, for this is at home
above all among the steppe nomads, whether Iranian or Turko-Mongol.^89

THE HERO AND HIS SON

As the essence of the hero is his prowess that others cannot match, there is not
much scope for a son. It is no credit or joy to a man to have a son inferior to
himself; but on the other hand a son who can equal him will detract from his
aura of uniqueness.
Where a son does have a role, it is generally as a substitute for the hero, a
replacement, or an avenger. Odysseus’ son Telemachus stands up for his
absent father’s interests, doing his best to keep Penelope’s suitors in check,
though not yet capable of overcoming them. Neoptolemus comes to Troy
after Achilles’ death and in a sense fills the gap he has left, winning distinction
but not the same level of supremacy and fame as his father. Orestes avenges
the murder of his father Agamemnon, and that is the sum of his heroic
achievement. In general, father and son do not operate together. Telemachus
assists Odysseus in the fight against the suitors, but this is not his raison d’être,
and it is not a customary feature of the Husband’s Return.

The Sohrab and Rustum motif

Usually, then, the activity of a hero’s son is separated in space or time from
that of the hero himself. Sometimes he is brought up in another place and
does not meet his father until he is already of fighting age. In many legends
they meet in circumstances that lead them to fight each other, with the tragic
result that the father kills his son, or the son his father. In some cases neither
is aware of the other’s identity; in others, only one of the pair knows who the
other is.^90

(^89) Cf. G. Germain (as n. 74), 48 f.
(^90) On the theme of the father–son combat cf. B. Busse, ‘Sagengeschichtliches zum
Hildebrandsliede’,Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 26 (1901), 1–92;
M. A. Potter, Sohrab and Rustem: The Epic Theme of a Combat between Father and Son (London
1902); Georg Baesecke, NGG 1940, Phil.-hist. Kl. (NF 3), 139–53; id., Das Hildebrandlied (Halle
1945), 51–5; J. de Vries, GRM 34 (1953), 257–74= K. Hauck (ed.), Zur germanisch-deutschen
Heldensage (Bad Homburg 1961), 248–84; id. in Ogam 50 (1957), 122–38; C. M. Bowra, Heroic
Poetry (London 1952), 399; Olga M. Davidson, Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings (Ithaca
1994), 128–41; D. A. Miller, JIES 22 (1994), 307–27; id. in E. C. Polomé (ed.), Indo-European
Religion after Dumézil (JIESM 16, Washington, DC 1996), 109–30; id. (2000), 345–54.
440 11. King and Hero