Indo-European Poetry and Myth

Nor does it come into question for the verse employed more than once by the
guslar Salih Ugljanin:

konj do konja, junak do junaka.

horse by horse and hero by hero.^128

The priamel

The ‘priamel’ (praeambulum) is a figure familiar to classicists from archaic
elegy and lyric, whereby a series of parallel statements serves to throw the last
into relief.^129 Solon fr. 9 may serve as an illustration: ‘From the cloud comes
the fury of snow and hail, | from the bright lightning comes thunder, | and
from big men a city is destroyed.’ When Achilles says to Hector ‘As there
are no treaties between lions and men, nor do wolves and lambs maintain
concord,... so there is no friendship for me and you’ (Il. 22. 262–5), it is
from the formal point of view a simile, but otherwise it much resembles
a priamel.
Occasional Indic examples can be found. Watkins has adduced RV 8. 3. 24,
‘The soul is food, the body clothing, | unguent gives strength; | as the fourth
I have named Pa ̄kastha ̄man, | generous giver of the bay.’^130 The poet’s patron,
Pa ̄kastha ̄man, has given him a horse, and the priamel serves to praise him by
setting him in parallel with those things that give food, clothing, and strength.
Another Vedic passage seems an astonishing pre-echo of Pindar’s most
famous priamel. RV 1. 161. 9:

a ́ ̄po bhu ̄ ́yis

̇

t

̇

ha ̄, íti éko abravı ̄d;

agnír bhu ̄ ́yis

̇

t

̇

a, íti anyó abravı ̄t;

vadharyántı ̄m bahúbhyah

̇

praíko abravı ̄d;

r

̇

ta ́ ̄ vádantas ́ camasa ́ ̄m apim

̇

s ́ata.

‘The waters are best’, said one;

‘fire is best’, said another;

one commended the thunderbolt(?) to many;

(but) speaking the truth, you (R

̇

bhus) carved the (gods’) chalice.

This is how Pindar exalts the Olympic Games:

(^128) SCHS ii, no. 1. 805; no. 18. 1070.
(^129) W. Kröhling, Die Priamel (Beispielreihung) als Stilmittel in der griechisch-römischen Dich-
tung (Diss. Greifswald 1935); Franz Dornseiff,Antike und alter Orient (Leipzig 1956), 379–93. In
West (1997), 509 f., 526, I have noted some Hebrew examples.
(^130) Watkins (1995), 115; his translation.
116 2. Phrase and Figure