You are men’s kinsman, Agni, you are their dear partner, a friend for friends to call
upon. (RV 1. 75. 3–4)The question is addressed to Agni, but it is not Agni who answers, it is the
Rishi himself. At the outset of the Iliad the poet, having requested the Muse
to sing of the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, proceeds by asking
(1. 8),
Which of the gods was it that set them at each other in strife?
The son of Leto and Zeus: for he, wroth with the king...Here we must take the question to be directed to the Muse,^66 but formally
there is no difference from the Vedic example. We find the same technique in
Serbo-Croat epic, which knows no Muses: ‘Who was the leader of the raiding
band? The leader was Mujo.. .’ (SCHS ii, no. 31. 12 f.).
SIMILESSimiles are perhaps a universal feature of poetry and colourful discourse. It
is reasonable to expect that they occurred in Indo-European poetry. Certainly
they are common enough in the literatures that concern us. A very few are
common to several traditions, and may perhaps represent remnants of a
shared heritage. A further series is shared by Greek and Indic (mainly the
epics), and these might be Graeco-Aryan. Finally I note two similes in Sappho
that are paralleled in Celtic and Germanic.
The great majority of similes are short, with the term of comparison not
elaborated by more than a single clause. The long simile that is such a familiar
ornament of the Homeric poems, where the picture is developed by succes-
sive clauses and a whole situation is sketched, is very rare elsewhere. In The
East Face of Helicon (218 f.) I was able to cite a bare handful of Near Eastern
examples. In the Indo-European literatures apart from Greek (and Latin) the
only example I have noted is Beowulf 2444–62.^67
Perhaps the most international of similes are the comparisons of a multi-
tude to grains of sand or the stars of the sky. Both of these are found in
Homer and in Near Eastern literatures.^68 In the Maha ̄bha ̄rata (3. 121. 9) King
Gaya’s wealth is said to have been ‘as countless as are the grains of sand on
(^66) As explicitly in 2. 761, and with indirect questions in 2. 484–7, Hes. Th. 114 f., Bacchyl. 15.
- For the question technique cf. also Pind. Ol. 13. 18–22, Pyth. 4. 70 f., Isth. 5. 39–42, 7. 1–15.
(^67) Durante (1976), 119 f., considers the long simile to be a Greek innovation. On similes in
the Indian epics see Brockington (1998), 99–102 (Maha ̄bha ̄rata), 361–3 (Ra ̄ma ̄yan ̇a).
(^68) West (1997), 245 f.
- Phrase and Figure 95