A method that enjoyed greater international recognition was to bury the
obstinate brave under a mass of earth or stones. The Lapith king Kaineus,
granted invulnerability by Poseidon, fought against the Centaurs, who
vanquished him by battering him into the ground and sealing him in with a
large rock.^100 A reference to Ajax being pelted with mud (Sophron fr. 31) is
probably to be understood in the same terms, as there are other traces of a
tradition that he was invulnerable.^101 In Norse myth the brothers Sorli and
Hamdir travel to the court of Jormunrekk (Ermanaric) to avenge the death of
their sister Svanhild, whom the Gothic king has married and put to death.
They wear impregnable armour and wreak some havoc, until Jormunrekk
sees what to do and gives the order to overwhelm them with a shower of
stones.^102 The Nart hero Sosruquo is dealt with similarly in an Abaza legend:
‘when his enemies realized they could not kill him, they buried him under the
ground and erected a great tumulus over him’ (Colarusso (2002), 266).
In various traditions the otherwise unassailable hero has one weak spot
where he is vulnerable, usually in his legs or feet, and this is his downfall. The
giant Talos who charged round Crete three times a day to guard it from attack
had a body of bronze but a weakness at the ankle, where a vein ran close to the
surface covered only by a thin membrane. Achilles too, according to late
authors and earlier vase-paintings, was vulnerable only in the ankle or foot.
Ajax in one tradition could be pierced only under his arm.^103 In the Indian
epic Durva ̄sas has made Krishna invulnerable except through the soles of his
feet; he is shot with an arrow under the heel, and his apotheosis follows.^104
Esfandiyar in the Sha ̄h-na ̄ma has a body of brass, but Rostam, using a special
arrow as directed by the Simorgh bird, shoots him fatally through the eye.^105
The Nart hero Soslan was born from an inseminated stone, from which he
emerged as a red-hot baby. After being tempered in cold water, wolf ’s milk, or
molten steel, he was vulnerable only in his knees or thighs, which had been
left untouched by the liquid, and his overthrow came when they were severed
by a flying wheel.^106 In German legend Siegfried had a soft spot on his back
(^100) Acusilaus FGrHist 2 F 22 = fr. 22 Fowler, and earlier art; Gantz (1993), 280 f.
(^101) See the next paragraph.
(^102) Hamðismál 25–31, Skáldsk. 42. For the motif of invincible armour cf. p. 157, n. 126.
(^103) Gantz (1993), 364 f. (Talos), 625–8 (Achilles); Aesch. fr. 83 (Ajax), cf. Pind. Isth. 6. 47,
apparently after ‘Hes.’ fr. 250.
(^104) MBh. 16. 5. 19 f.; compared with Achilles by Walter Ruben, Krishna. Konkordanz und
Kommentar der Motive seines Heldenlebens (Istanbul 1943), 236 f., 244; Pisani (1969), 203.
(^105) Levy (1967), 207–11.
(^106) Georges Dumézil, Loki (2nd edn., Darmstadt 1959), 160–81; Sikojev (1985), 73, 136,
cf. 171/221, 291; Colarusso (2002), 52 f., 185 f., 259–65, 333, 388. W. Burkert, Würzburger
Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft 5 (1979), 253–61=Kleine Schriften, ii (Göttingen
2003), 87–95, brings the Caucasian myth into connection with the Hurrian–Hittite myth of
Ullikummi, the stone colossus who was toppled by sawing through his ankles (pp. 262 f.).
- King and Hero 445