Modifications of the basic theme appear in Armenian and Ossetic
tradition. In the Armenian epic David unknowingly fights his son, the
younger Mher, but there is a peaceful resolution (Sassountsy David 330–3).
The Nart Uryzmæg is one day transported to a marvellous realm under the
sea, where he is welcomed by people he realizes are his relatives, the family of
Donbettir. Among them is a delightful boy, whom he quite accidentally, and
through no fault of his own, kills. It turns out that this is his own son; his wife
had given birth to him in Uryzmæg’s absence and sent him to her parents’
house for fosterage.^93
Once again the question is whether these stories represent an inherited
Indo-European theme or just a wandering folk-tale. Their distribution ––
India, Iran, Ossetia, Armenia, Greece, Germany, Ireland, Russia –– matches the
Indo-European map much more neatly than do the versions of the Husband’s
Return. On the other hand it is just the kind of dramatic motif that might
readily be taken over from one people to another and attached to different
national heroes. This is, I think, the prudent diagnosis.^94
The hero’s child as object of pathosWhen a hero kills his own son, unwittingly or in the recognition that there is
no other option, his own supremacy is confirmed, but that is not the point:
the point is that it is a tragic outcome, above all for him. There are other types
of story that draw their emotional power from the pathos inherent in the
death of children –– not lusty lads engaged in combat but helpless innocents.
Again it is the father who suffers most. This is especially the case where he
is the killer, as in the myth of Heracles slaughtering his children in a fit of
insanity, or the various stories of the man forced to sacrifice his own child.^95
But a hero’s children may also be killed by an enemy. Here we must take
note of a distinctive and gruesome story-line that may be called the Thyestes
motif. Classicists will recall that Atreus, whose wife had been seduced by his
brother Thyestes, killed the latter’s children and served them up to him in
a casserole. When he realized what he was eating, he was horrified and over-
turned the table. Herodotus (1. 119) relates a similar story about Astyages and
(^93) Sikojev (1985), 40–3.
(^94) Cf. G. Baesecke (as n. 90, 1945), who argues for derivation of the Russian, German, and
Irish versions from the Iranian.
(^95) We may think of Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigeneia, or the Indian myth of S ́unah
̇
s ́epa
(A. B. Keith, The Veda of the Black Yajus School entitled Taittirı ̄ya San ̇hita ̄, i (Cambridge, Mass.
1914), cxl; Walter Ruben, Die Philosophen der Upanishaden (Bern 1947), 74 f.). For other Greek
(and some Semitic) examples cf. West (1997), 441 f., 484 f.
442 11. King and Hero