these gods are also concerned with successful harvests and with protection
from blight.
As for healing gods, they do occur everywhere, but again there are some-
times other coincident features. The Greek Apollo, a rather complex figure,
has probably taken over the characteristics of more than one older divinity,
including the healer Paiawon (Paieon, Paion, Paian). He has points of contact
on the one hand with the Indian Rudra, on the other with Celtic and
Germanic deities. His power over sickness and health is dramatically por-
trayed in the first book of the Iliad, where he first shoots his arrows to bring
plague upon cattle and men, and then relieves it in response to prayer. The
image has striking parallels in Ugaritic and the Old Testament.^93 But Rudra
too is pictured in the Veda as an archer whose missiles send disease and death
upon humans, cattle, and horses. Prayers are directed to him imploring him
to spare his worshippers and their animals. He is said to have a thousand
remedies at his disposal, and a healing hand.^94
Caesar (Bell. Gall. 6. 17. 2) reports that the Gauls had an ‘Apollo’ who
dispelled diseases. In fact, as the later inscriptions indicate, they had many
local healing gods, the more important of whom will have been identified
with Apollo. The Celtic divine healer who shows the strongest point of con-
tact with him is Dían Cécht, who appears in Irish legend as the healer of the
Tuatha Dé Danann, that is, of the gods. In the Cath Maige Tuired (lines 133–46
Gray), after Núadu’s hand has been cut off in battle, Dían Cécht provides him
with an artificial silver hand that works just as well. But Dían’s son Míach
improves on this by re-attaching Núadu’s original hand. Dían is indignant
and hurls a sword at his son’s head four times. The first three wounds Míach
is able to heal, but the fourth penetrates his brain and he dies. The story
recalls that of Apollo’s son Asclepius, whom Zeus (not Apollo) killed with the
thunderbolt for being too expert a healer and raising men from the dead.
In the Greek myth Apollo reacts by killing the makers of the thunderbolt,
the Cyclopes, and is punished by being exiled from the gods for a year, or nine
years, and being forced to serve a mortal man, Admetus. In this he can be
compared with Odin, of whom Saxo Grammaticus tells that he was exiled
from the gods and reduced to servile estate for nine years.^95 In itself this
would not count for much, especially as the transfer of a motif from Classical
myth cannot be ruled out. But Odin/Woden has other links with Apollo, not
so much qua healer –– though it is he who cures Baldr’s lamed horse in the
(^93) West (1997), 348 f.
(^94) References in Macdonell (1898), 75 f.; cf. Puhvel in Cardona et al. (1970), 372 f.; id. (1987),
58, 134 f.
(^95) Saxo 3. 4. 9–11 p. 72, cf. 1. 7. 1 p. 25.
148 3. Gods and Goddesses