kenning for ‘warrior’ both in early Welsh and in Norse poetry.^139 ‘A golden
oak was the outstanding Móen’, an early Irish eulogist assures us.^140 The motif
occurs in the Russian byliny in the form that a hero, surprised that his mighty
blow has no effect on his enemy, wonders if his strength is failing and tries
smiting a tree, which falls.
As a tree can be felled, either by a woodcutter or by a stroke of lightning,
so can a warrior. Simoeisios, struck down by Ajax, falls like a poplar cut
down by a joiner (Il. 4. 482–7, cf. 13. 178, 389). Indra struck down Vr
̇
tra ‘as
an axe (does) the woods’ (RV 10. 89. 7, cf. 1. 32. 5). Ra ̄ma, on hearing of his
father’s death, falls down in a swoon like a tree in the forest cut down by the
axe (Rm. 2. 95. 9). Then again, Indra felled Vr
̇
tra like a tree struck by a
thunderbolt (RV 2. 14. 2, cf. 6. 33. 3; MBh. 2. 42. 21; 3. 271. 17), while Hector,
laid out by a stone from Ajax’s hand, falls like an oak under Zeus’ thunder-
bolt (Il. 14. 414).^141
Diomedes charging among the Trojans after sustaining an arrow wound is
compared to a lion who leaps into a sheepfold, roused only the more by a
wound from a shepherd, and causes havoc; a little later he is like a lion leaping
among cattle (Il. 5. 136–43, 161; cf. 10. 485, 15. 630). Similarly when Bhı ̄ma
sets upon Duryodhana’s army he will be ‘a lion invading a cowpen’ (MBh. 5.
- 15).^142 Sarpedon succumbing to Patroclus is like a bull being killed by a
lion (Il. 16. 487, cf. 17. 542), and so too the demon Man
̇
imat ‘was felled by
Bhı ̄masena, as a bull by a lion’ (MBh. 3. 157. 69; cf. 7. 152. 17).
The Trojans flee like cattle that a lion has put to flight (Il. 11. 172 f.), and
the Karu ̄s
̇
aka chieftains deserted S ́is ́upa ̄la ‘running away like puny game at the
sight of a lion’ (MBh. 5. 22. 27). Timorous armies are elsewhere compared to
deer (Il. 13. 102, 22. 1; MBh. 7. 148. 10, 45).^143 Or they are driven back like
clouds by wind (Il. 11. 305 f., 16. 297–300; MBh. 7. 19. 32, 29. 34, 64. 57, 115.
20, etc.; like gnats by wind, Sassountsy David 349).
(^139) Guid gunet, Y Gododdin 785; hildimeiðr,Fáfnismál 36; Óþens eike‘Odin’s oaks’, Egil
Skallagrímsson, Ho ̨fuðlausn 8; elsewhere Báleygs viðir‘Odin’s woods’.
(^140) Campanile (1977), 119 f.; (1990b), 61.
(^141) Cf. Durante (1976), 121. The tree simile could also be used of others besides warriors
struck down by a god. In the preface to the Hittite story of Appu (§1; Hoffner (1998), 83) a deity
is said to ‘chop down evil men like trees’. In a hymn to Agni he is asked to ‘bring the wicked
one down as with the blade, O unageing king, like a tree of the forest with the cutting edge’
(RV 6. 8. 5).
(^142) For Assyrian and Hebrew parallels see West (1997), 219, 246 f.
(^143) This very natural comparison is again found in Assyrian and Hebrew texts: West (1997),
248.
- Arms and the Man 495