with only their weapons. Naked warriors still appear here and there in the
Táin and other Irish sagas, and are depicted on Celtic coins.^7
Clothes make the man, they say. The warriors’ rejection of human garb,
together with their predatory life in the wild, assimilates them to wild
animals, and they seem often to have been styled as wolves and to have
consciously adopted a wolfish identity, clothing themselves in wolfskins and
uttering terrifying howls. The Norse berserks are sometimes called úlfheðnar,
‘wolf-skinned’. This is paralleled in the Old Irish martial sobriquet luchthonn,
as well as in the Sanskrit name Vr
̇
ka ̄jina ‘Wolfskin’. Personal names based
on ‘wolf ’ occur widely among the Indo-European peoples, and like other
theriophoric names such as those involving ‘bear’ or ‘boar’ they are inter-
preted with reference to the feral qualities displayed by the warrior.^8 In
British, Irish, and Norse poetry ‘wolf ’ is a laudatory metaphor for the warrior
hero, and it appears also in Homeric similes for advancing battle-lines.^9
In Homeric epic, while there are no professional berserkir, a few of the
greatest heroes are from time to time visited on the battlefield by a mad raging
fury that makes them invincible. This fury is called λ3σσα, which is a derivative
ofλ3κο‘wolf ’. It is as if they temporarily become wolves.^10 In other Indo-
European cultures the term ‘wolf ’ is applied to brigands and outlaws who live
in the wild.^11 This form of assimilation to the wolf is not unconnected with the
widespread belief in lycanthropy, the idea that certain persons (women as well
as men) on occasion transform themselves into wolves. This is often conceived
to involve putting on a wolf-skin or wolf-girdle.^12
(^7) Polyb. 2. 28. 8; Diod. 5. 29. 2, 30. 3 (Posidonius F 169 Th.); Táin (I) 3367–85, 3937; Togail
bruidne Dá Derga 25; M. Green (1986), 108; Davidson (1988), 88 f.; McCone (1990), 205, 213.
For an Assyrian parallel cf. West (1997), 213.
(^8) On theriophoric names cf. Felix Solmsen, Indogermanische Eigennamen (Heidelberg 1922),
157 f.; Krahe (1955–64), i. 70 f.; Mayer (1957–9), ii. 120 f.; Schramm (1957), 77–83; D. Ellis
Evans, Gaulish Personal Names (Oxford 1967), 291 f.; Campanile (1977), 80 f.; K. McCone
in Meid (1987), 118, 121 f.; Gamkrelidze–Ivanov (1995), 414, 416, 418; Sergent (1995), 296 f.;
D. H. Green (1998), 80–2. The name of the Trojan Hyrtakos (Il. 13. 759, al.) possibly reflects
Hittite h
̆
artakka-‘wolf ’ (Watkins (1994), 709). On warriors and animals cf. N. Plagne, Études
Indo-Européennes 13 (1995), 150–67.
(^9) Il. 4. 471, 11. 72, 16. 156; Y Gododdin 740; Sigurðarkviða in skamma 12. 3, cf. Helgakviða
Hundingsbana B 37; Irish references in Campanile (1977), 80.
(^10) West (1997), 213 f.; P. Sauzeau in Domenico Accorinti–Pierre Chuvin (edd.), Des Géants à
Dionysos. Mélanges ... offerts à Francis Vian (Alessandria 2003), 95–108.
(^11) In the Hittite Laws (1. 37), ‘you have become a wolf ’; Vedic vr ́
̇
ka-; Old Norse vargr. Cf.
Michael Jacoby, Wargus, vargr, ‘Verbrecher’, ‘Wolf ’. Eine sprach- und rechtsgeschichtliche Untersu-
chung (Uppsala 1974); Puhvel (1987), 196 f.; K. McCone in Meid (1987), 119; Davidson (1988),
79; E. Campanile, JIES 7 (1979), 237–47; id. (1990b), 27–32; id. in Ramat (1998), 4 f. Alcaeus
(fr. 130b. 9 f.) apparently refers to a certain Onomakles as a ‘lone wolf ’ guerrilla who lived as a
‘wolf-spearman’ (λυκαιχμα) or in the λυκαιχμαι; cf. ZPE 80 (1990), 3.
(^12) On lycanthropy cf. Grimm (1883–8), 1093–8, 1629–31; Feist (1913), 332 f., 478 n. 2;
Robert Eisler, Man into Wolf (London 1951); de Vries (1956), i. 237 f.; R. A. Ridley, JIES 4 (1976),
321–31 (Baltic and Slavonic); Gamkrelidze–Ivanov (1995), 408, 414.
450 12. Arms and the Man