hymns are in dialogue form, and there are elements of dialogue in some of the
Ga ̄tha ̄s. Most of these early Indo-Iranian examples are theological rather than
narrative in essence, but several have a mythological setting (RV 3. 33; 4. 18;
- 10, 95, 108), and this use of dialogue poetry is evidently as old as any. The
tradition continues in the Maha ̄bha ̄rata and Pura ̄n
̇
as. More instances can be
cited from Irish saga and from early Welsh poetry.^111
One recurrent type is the dialogue of a man and a woman, or a boy and
girl, in some sort of erotic situation. The setting may be mythological or ideal.
Examples occur already in the Rigveda, and we find them also in archaic
Greece and in Lithuanian folk song. The type is not exclusively Indo-
European, as it appears also in Sumerian and Akkadian poetry, in the Song of
Solomon, and in Egypt.^112
Invectives?The Gaulish Bards, wielding their lyres, ‘eulogize some, but abuse others’.^113
The poet with the skill to praise and bless has also the skill to denounce and
mock and curse, if his enmity is aroused, and woe betide the one who arouses
it, because the hostile song can exercise a magical force and bring him to
perdition. This is at any rate the belief in ancient Ireland, illustrated by many
stories, for example of an inimical poet whose song brought a king’s face out
in boils, or made his land sterile. Similar properties are ascribed in Norse saga
to ‘hate stanzas’,níðvísur.
Some have argued that this dual potency of the northern bard should be
regarded as a feature of the Indo-European poet.^114 They can cite the stories
of how the Greek iambographers Archilochus and Hipponax drove their
victims to suicide with their invectives; the stories are no doubt apocryphal,
and seem to be somehow grounded in a ritual institution,^115 but it is possible
none the less that they are echoes of a serious belief in the harmful powers
of satire. Certainly it is a very ancient notion that a malevolent poem has a
dangerous potency. The old Roman Laws of the Twelve Tables prescribed
penalties for anyone qui malum carmen occentassit. This probably referred
(^111) Táin (I) 2754–97, 2835–58, 3017–80, (L) 1413–28, 1433–60, 2638–714, 3187–222,
3386–413; Rowland (1990), 461 f./506 f., 463 f./507 f. See further Winternitz (1959), 89 f. with
literature; R. Ambrosini, Bollettino del Centro di Studi Filologici e Linguistici Siciliani 11 (1970),
53–87; Watkins (1995), 141–4.
(^112) RV 1. 179; 10. 10, 95; Sappho fr. 137; Rhesa (1825), 268–70; West (1997), 530 f.
(^113) Diodorus 5. 31. 2 (Posidonius F 169 Theiler).
(^114) Dumézil (1943), 235–8; D. Ward, JIES 1 (1973), 127–44; Campanile–Orlandi–Sani (1974),
237 f.; questioned by Campanile (1990b), 79.
(^115) M. L. West, Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus (Berlin–New York 1974), 22–39.
- Poet and Poesy 69