knowledge (19. 405). Dron
̇
a’s horses shed tears when he is about to die.^125
Sigurd’s horse Grani hung its head over the slain hero, and perhaps wept.^126
‘Upon David’s death, Kourkig Jelaly went wild, | broke his rein tied to the tree,
ran amuck, | trampled to death every man, | animal, and horse on his path, |
until he reached Khantout Khanoun’s door’ (Sassountsy David 335).
The earth is sometimes said to drink the blood of the fallen. The image
appears in a Hittite military oath: ‘Then he pours out wine and says, “[This] is
not wine, it is your blood, and [as the ea]rth has swallowed this, so shall the
earth also sw[allow you]r [blood] and [... ].” ’^127 In Homer the effect of
the shed blood on the earth is remarked, without the drinking metaphor: ‘his
dark blood flowed forth and soaked the earth’ (Il. 13. 655, 21. 119). But in
Aeschylus the earth drinks it (Sept. 736, Cho. 66, Eum. 979). So too in the
Indian epic. ‘If the Gandharvas do not free the sons of Dhr
̇
tara ̄s
̇t
̇ra peacefully,
then earth today shall drink the blood of their king!’ (MBh. 3. 232. 20; cf. 7.
- 27; 8. 49. 112; Rm. 3. 2. 22, 29. 6). In an Old English poem it is written
that ‘feuding has existed among mankind ever since earth swallowed the
blood of Abel’ (Maxims A 192, trs. Bradley).
In the lurid episode in which Achilles exchanges words with and is pursued
by the river Scamander, the latter complains that his stream is being blocked
by the masses of corpses slain by Achilles (Il. 21. 218–20); that is in fact what
causes him to overflow. The motif appears also in the new Archilochus elegy
(P. Oxy. 4708), in which it is said that the Caicus was crowded with the
Achaean dead when Telephus routed them in Mysia. It is paralleled in the
Norse poem on the battle of the Goths and the Huns as paraphrased in
theHervarar saga (14): ‘and the Goths slew and felled so many that the
streams were blocked and tumbled out of their channels’. It recurs in Saxo’s
version of the lost Biarkamál (161 f.), et corpora sparsa revolvit | elisus venis
vapidum spumantibus amnis, while in another passage of Saxo the sea itself is
covered with bodies so that ‘the harbours were choked and stank, the boats,
surrounded by corpses, were blocked in and could not move’ (5. 7. 5 p. 130).
Another means of expressing the horror of battlefield carnage is to evoke
the carrion birds and the dogs or wolves who will enjoy feasting on the
corpses. They are not normally described in the act (the reference to the eels
andfishes feeding on Asteropaios in Il. 21. 203 f. is exceptional); it is more
often a prospect with which to undermine your enemy’s morale when you
make your boastful speech at him (see above), or it is mentioned as the
(^125) MBh. 7. 192. 20, noted by V. Pisani, ZDMG 103 (1953), 130 = Schmitt (1968), 159 f.;
cf. Rm. 6. 65. 18.
(^126) Brot af Sigurðarkviðu 7, Guðrúnarkviða B 5; it wept if úrughlýra in the second passage
refers to Grani and not Gudrun.
(^127) N. Oettinger, Die militärischen Eide der Hethiter (Wiesbaden 1976), 21, 74 f.
- Arms and the Man 491