As Hector presses the Achaeans back towards their ships, Agamemnon
shouts to them and reproaches them, asking them what has happened to the
boasts they made when they were feasting and drinking in safety in Lemnos,
when they swore they were supreme and could each stand up to a hundred or
two hundred Trojans (Il. 8. 228–34; cf. 20. 83–5). Ælfwine urges the English in
similar terms: ‘Let us call to mind those declarations we often uttered over
mead, when from our seat we heroes in hall would put up pledges about
tough fighting’ (Maldon 212–14). In Saxo’s Latin version of the lost
Biarkamál the Danish warrior Hjalti rouses his sleeping comrades to resist the
treacherous attack of Hjorvard, and in the course of a long rhetorical address
he says:
omnia quae poti temulento prompsimus ore
fortibus edamus animis, et uota sequamur
per summum iurata Iouem superosque potentes.
All those things we uttered in our cups from tipsy lips
let us deliver with valiant hearts, and follow the vows
we swore by Jupiter on high and the powers above.^91Other Homeric hortatory motifs find their parallels in the Indian epic.
When Sarpedon sees his forces being worsted by Patroclus, he calls to them
α!δ.,p Λ3κιοι· πο ́ σε φε3γετε;‘Shame, Lycians, where are you fleeing to?’
(Il. 16. 422). Similarly Bhı ̄s
̇
ma: ‘Ye Ks
̇atriyas, where do ye go? This is not the
duty of the righteous... Ye foremost of heroes, do not violate your pledges’
(MBh. 6. 55. 79). When Agamemnon sees any of the Achaeans holding
back from the fighting, he demands τφθ, ο τω #στητε τεθηπο ́ τε (Pτε νεβρο;
‘Why do you stand thus in a daze like fawns?’ (Il. 4. 243). And so Yudhis
̇
t
̇hira:
‘Why do you stand thus as if stupefied?’ (MBh. 7. 164. 50).
Not in Homer, but in the dramatists, urgent calls to attack or kill often take
the form of an accumulation of imperative verbs with similar meaning:
Ar. Nub. 1508 δωκε βα ́ λλε πα4ε,Av. 365 aλκε τλλε πα4ε δε4ρε, Eur. Or. 1302
φονε3ετε κανετε θενετ, Zλλυτε; cf. Ar. Ach. 281–3, Eq. 247–52, [Eur.] Rhes. 675.
This again is paralleled in the Maha ̄bha ̄rata, 7. 136. 9 hata, praharata ̄bhı ̄ta,
vidhyata, vyavakr
̇
ntata, ‘slay, strike fearlessly, pierce, cut to pieces’; cf. 9. 11. 46,
- The redundancy is a natural expression of emotional intensity.^92
(^91) Lines 50–2, from Saxo 2. 7. 7 p. 54; Edd. min. 22.
(^92) It can be explained in the same way in the Old Irish charm against worms adduced by
Watkins (1995), 497 and 522, gono míl, orgo míl, marbu míl, ‘I slay the creature, I slaughter the
creature, I kill the creature’. (But see the remarks in Chapter 8 about repetition in spells.) John
Penney reminds me of Tab. Iguv. VIb. 61 tursitu tremitu, hondu holtu, ninctu nepitu, sonitu
sauitu, which ‘would appear, whatever the precise meaning, to be hostile acts’. Cf. p. 328.
478 12. Arms and the Man