Eνθρωπο (of obscure etymology), but in the poetic language mortals can
be referred to as $πι-χθο ́ νιοι, literally ‘those on earth’. The meaning is spelt
out more fully in the formula χαμα? $ρχομνων qνθρ.πων, ‘men who go
on the earth’, or for example in the Eddic Fáfnismál (23. 4–6), manna þeira er
mold troða | þic qveð ec óblauðastan alinn, ‘of those men who tread the earth,
I say you are the most intrepid’. The modern Lithuanian word for ‘man’ in
the sense of ‘human being’ is zˇmõgus, in origin a compound, ‘earth-goer’,
combining the roots seen in Greek χαμα and βανω.
In Indic, Phrygian, Italic, and Celtic tradition the ancient pairing of
‘heavenly’ (divine) and ‘earthly’ (human) was maintained with the original
lexical roots. In RV 7. 46. 2 Rudra is said to have concern for both the earthly
race and the heavenly: ks
̇
ámyasya jánmanas... divyásya. In the Phrygian
inscriptions there is much use of the formula με δεω κε ζεμελω κε and
variants, understood to mean ‘among both gods and men’.^17 Ennius has
diuomque hominumque several times, and not only in adapting the Homeric
πατ^ρ qνδρ;ν τε θε;ν τε (Ann. 284, 591, 592, cf. 203 Skutsch). A Gaulish
boundary stone of the second or first century designates a piece of land
with the remarkable compound adjective , rendered in the
Latin version of the inscription as co(m)munem deis et hominibus.^18 In Insular
Celtic the derivative of proto-Celtic gdonyo- had lost its inital velar and
come to alliterate with the word for ‘god’, and so in early Irish texts we find
for doíne domnaib scéo déib‘over worlds of men and (over) gods’;sech bid día,
bid duine‘he will be both god and man’;arddu deeib dóen‘a man more
exalted than the gods’; in an early Welsh poem as clywo a duw a dyn, ‘let both
God and man hear it’.^19 In Germanic the two terms would have been teiwo ̄z
and gumanez, but in this coupling, at least, teiwo ̄z was replaced by *guðo ̄,
probably for the sake of alliteration;^20 hence in the Edda we findgoðo ̨ll ok
gumar for ‘all gods and men’ (Lokasenna 45. 3, 55. 6). In Snorri’s prose the
poeticgumar is also replaced, and he writes guðanna ok manna (genitive
plural, Gylf. 21, al.).
(^17) W. M. Ramsay, Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts in Wien 8 (1905),
Beiblatt, 107 f.; C. Brixhe in Gusmani et al. (1997), 45; A. Lubotsky in Mír Curad 419 f. with a
Luvian parallel.
(^18) *De ̄voχdonion (masculine or neuter, agreeing with atom or atosˇ=campum). M. Lejeune,
Recueil des inscriptions gauloises, ii. 1 (Paris 1988), 36, no. E-2; Meid (1994), 22; Lambert (2003),
78–80; K. T. Witczak, SIGL 4 (2002), 103–5; J. N. Adams, Bilingualism and the Latin Language
(Cambridge 2003), 188 f. X. Delamarre in his Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise (2nd edn., Paris
2003) takes the word as the genitive plural of a dvandva compound, ‘gods-and-men’.
(^19) K. Meyer (1914), 10; Imran Brain 48; Campanile (1988), 28 no. 4. 3; Rowland (1990), 441
st. 88a.
(^20) Meid (1991), 17.
- Gods and Goddesses 125