The relationship of god to people was expressed using terms taken from the
human world: king, father, herdsman. In the Rigveda gods are frequently
addressed or described as ra ̄ ́jan-, ‘king’, or sam
̇
ra ̄ ́j-, ‘great king’: Varuna (1. 24.
7–9, 12–14, 156. 4, etc.), Indra (1. 63. 7, 178. 2, etc.), Soma (1. 91. 4, 8, etc.),
Agni (1. 79. 6; 3. 1. 18, etc.), Mitra (3. 59. 4). The Greek deities are similarly
titled Eναξ or Eνασσα; a Wanax appears as a deity in the Pylos tablets.
βασιλε3 and βασλεια are used especially of Zeus and Hera, but sporadic-
ally of others, and as an independent divine name (Βασιλε3,Βασλη) in
several places.^39
The titles ‘father’ and ‘mother’ cleave especially to Heaven and Earth, as
will be shown in the next chapter. But other Vedic gods besides Dyaus are
called ‘our father’ or ‘the father’: Agni (RV 1. 31. 10; 2. 1. 9), Tvas
̇
t
̇r
̇(2. 17. 6;
- 10), Br
̇
- 10), Br
haspati (6. 73. 1), Varuna (7. 52. 3). In Greece the practice is
rare, but Ion of Chios addresses Dionysus as πα ́ τερ (fr. 26. 13; cf. Aesch. fr.
382). At Rome it was well established. Cato quotes prayers containing the
vocatives Iane pater and Mars pater (De agric. 134. 2 f., 141. 2–4). Aeneas in
Ennius (Ann. 26) prays to pater Tiberine, as does Cocles in Livy (2. 10. 11).
Gellius (5. 12. 5) records a Neptunus pater and Saturnus pater, and inscrip-
tions attest Marspiter, Dis pater, Vediovis pater, Liber pater, and others.^40
Divine ‘mothers’ are especially common in northern and western Europe;
I shall come to them presently.
In the Hittite treaty between Muwatalli and Alaksandu of Wilusa (CTH 76
iv 1) one of the gods invoked is ‘the Sun-god of heaven, king of the lands,
shepherd of mankind’. The shepherd metaphor may in this case be a Semitic
borrowing, as it is commonly used of gods in Babylonian and Hebrew
poetry.^41 But it could equally be Indo-European inheritance; it was natural
in any pastoralist society, and we shall see in Chapter 11 that its application to
human rulers was common to Indo-European and Near Eastern peoples. In
the Rigveda gopa ̄ ́h
̇
‘cowherd’ is widely used in the general sense of protector
of anyone or anything, and often applied to gods. For example, Vishnu in RV
- 18 is called gopa ̄ ́áda ̄bhiyah
̇
- 18 is called gopa ̄ ́áda ̄bhiyah
, ‘undeceived cowherd’, that is, protector of
men; cf. 2. 9. 6. Agni in 1. 96. 4 is vis ́a ̄ ́m
̇
gopa ̄ ́h
̇, cowherd of human settlements.
Br
̇
haspati in 2. 23. 6 is told tuvám
̇no gopa ̄ ́h
̇pathikr ́
̇d,vicaks
̇an
̇áh
̇, ‘you are
our pathmaking, observant cowherd’. From Greek poetry we can quote Ana-
creon’s prayer to Artemis (PMG 348), in which he uses the verb ποιμανειν
‘shepherd’ of her power over the people of Magnesia on the Maeander.
(^39) Cf. Usener (1896), 226–31; Campanile (1977), 67–71. For Near Eastern gods as kings see
West (1997), 108, 557 f.
(^40) CIL i. (^2) 970, 1012, 1439, 2290, etc.; Campanile (1977), 68, 71–3, 76.
(^41) West (1997), 533.
- Gods and Goddesses 131