back at least to the Neolithic period, and may be assumed in some degree for
the Indo-Europeans. They pictured their gods anthropomorphically, and if
they pictured them in dwellings and with material possessions, they may
well have told of a particular god who made these things for them. Two motifs
that recur in different branches of the tradition stand out as potentially sig-
nificant: the making by a special artificer of the chief god’s distinctive weapon
(Indra’s and Zeus’ bolt; Lug’s spear), and the craftsman god’s association with
the immortals’ drinking. This brings us on to our next topic.
The food of the godsOur mortal life and death, our health and sickness, are bound up with what
we eat and drink. If the gods are exempt from death and disease, it is because
they are nourished by special aliments not available to us. That they do not
eat or drink human food is stated explicitly in Greek and Indian texts. ‘For
they do not eat cereals, they do not drink red wine; that is why they are
without blood, and known as the Deathless Ones’ (Il. 5. 341 f.). ‘The gods, of
course, neither eat nor drink. They become sated by just looking at this
nectar’ (Cha ̄ndogya Upanis
̇
ad 3. 6. 1, trs. P. Olivelle). The doctrine is partially
preserved in the Edda: ‘on wine alone the weapon-lord Odin ever lives’
(Grímnismál 19); ‘he needs no food; wine is to him both drink and meat’
(Gylf. 38).
The Vedic gods, as we have seen, are amr ́
̇
ta ̄h
̇, literally ‘non-dying’, and their
food is designated by the neuter of the same word, amr ́
̇
tam (e.g. RV 3. 26. 7; 6.- 16; 9. 70. 2, 110. 4; 10. 123. 3). It was secondarily identified with soma, the
intoxicating yellow juice offered to the gods in Indo-Iranian cult; but soma
was a material reality, present on earth as well as in the world of the gods,
whereas amr ́
̇
tam was a mythical entity. There is a rarefied echo of its status as
divine food in the Ga ̄tha ̄s, where Zarathushtra says to Ahura Mazda ̄ ‘Thou
hast both wholeness [i.e. perfect health] and deathlessness (amərətatåh) for
nourishment’ (Y. 34. 11).
The Greek word that corresponds exactly to amr ́
̇
tam (*n
̊-mr
̊-to-m) is
Eμβροτον. We do not find this used by itself of the divine food, but we find
Eμβροτον εjδαρ (Hymn. Ap. 127, Aphr. 260), which should not be under-
stood as ‘immortal food’ but as ‘food of non-dying’.^126 It is alternatively called
qμβρο ́ σιον... εjδαρ or qμβροση, ‘ambrosia’. It is a nice detail that it can
(^126) In the same way the phrase Eμβροτα τε3χεα, used of the armour that the gods gave to
Peleus (Il. 17. 194, 202), must originally have meant ‘armour of non-dying, invincible armour’.
Apollo in 16. 680 anoints Sarpedon’s body with ambrosia and wraps it in Eμβροτα ε ματα, a
relic of a version in which he was granted immortality.
- Gods and Goddesses 157