even when they went to war, and that they recited encomia of them before the
assembled company. One who was late for a feast and missed out on the
chief ’s hospitality sang a eulogy of him, lamenting his own misfortune, and
was rewarded with a bag of gold, whereupon he produced yet more extrava-
gant praises, trotting along beside the chariot of the departing potentate. In
121 Domitius Ahenobarbus, campaigning in Gaul, received an envoy
from the Arvernian king Bituitus, in whose entourage was a poet who ‘with
barbarian music’ exalted the pedigree, bravery, and wealth of Bituitus, his
people, and the envoy.^101
At the court of Attila the Hun, which seems to have been more Germanic
than Mongolian in its cultural character, poems were recited in the evenings,
celebrating the king’s victories and his prowess in battle and moving some
of his old warriors to tears.^102 In India the tradition of royal eulogies in verse
was carried on under the Gupta kings of the third to fourth century; we have
texts of them from inscriptions.^103 Less florid examples, more archaic-looking
and more personal in tone, are preserved from sixth-century Ireland and
Britain.^104 From medieval Russia we have the recollection in the Lay of Igor (5)
of the famous poet Boyan, whose strings used to ‘throb out praise (slavu) for
the princes’.
Having praised his patron in life, and having in many cases, no doubt,
become bound to him by real ties of affection, the poet would lament him
also in death. Jordanes (Getica 257) gives a Latin paraphrase of the praise-
song performed at Attila’s funeral. It recalled his achievements, and dealt
diplomatically with the fact that he died ignobly of a nosebleed while slum-
bering in a drunken stupor. It was easier if the man died heroically in battle.
We have examples in the moving laments for the British kings Urien of
Rheged, Cynddylan of Powys, and others. When Hector’s body is brought
back to Troy in the Iliad, the poet relates that they laid him on a bed and set
singers beside him to sing dirges. He then puts formal laments in the mouths
of Andromache, Hecuba, and Helen, as if in lieu of those of the professional
singers. There is a parallel substitution in the Irish saga Cath Finntrága, where
(^101) Posidonius ap. Ath. 246cd, 152e (F 172, 170 Theiler); Diod. 5. 31. 2 (F 169); Appian, Celt.
fr. 12. There is an Irish tale that begins, ‘Once Diarmait mac Cerbaill’s panegyrists were praising
the king and his peace and his good conduct’ (Koch–Carey (2000), 212).
(^102) Priscus, Hist. 67bc (Corp. Script. Hist. Byz. i. 204).
(^103) Edited and translated in D. R. Bhandarkar, B. Ch. Chhabra, G. S. Gai, Corpus
Inscriptionum Indicarum, iii (revised edn., New Delhi 1981).
(^104) Campanile (1988), nos. 10, 12–13, 16–19; Koch–Carey (2000), 52, 58, 301, 342–51 (praise-
poems for Urien), 360; Y Gododdin 30–8, 553–60, 608–16, 730–5. The Irish verses are compared
with the Gupta inscriptions by Myles Dillon, The Archaism of Irish Tradition (London 1947),
15–18; Campanile–Orlandi–Sani (1974), 231–6.
- Poet and Poesy 65