in effect a poetic thesaurus cast in literary form; the Know-all is the poet
himself.
The compiler of the Irish bardic grammar Auraicept na n-Éces, apropos of
grammatical gender, cites three different ways of expressing the distinction
of masculine, feminine, and neuter, and says that ‘according to some’ the first
(the plainest and simplest) is the idiom of the sons of Míl, that is, of the
ordinary Irish people; the second, which uses artificial terms, is that of an
earlier race, the Fir Bolg; the third, an old set of technical words, is that of the
Tuatha Dé Danann. These last are in a sense the gods (see below).^142
Indo-European poets no doubt had at their disposal a professional vocabu-
lary that included rare, choice, archaic, or artificial words. On the evidence
cited above, it may be inferred that they also had the concept (or conceit) that
some such words, not current in the speech of men, belonged to that of the
gods.
Predecessors and antagonistsAccording to several of the mythic traditions that concern us, before the
present gods ruled in heaven there was a different set, still known as gods but
no longer active in the world. In Greek myth they are identified as the Titans.
Hesiod applies to them the expression ‘the former gods’,θεο? προ ́ τεροι
(Th. 424, 486). The Rigveda too knows of ‘former gods’,pu ̄ ́rve deva ̄ ́h
̇
(1. 164.
50, identified as the ‘Sa ̄dhyas’; 7. 21. 7; 10. 90. 16, 109. 4, 191. 2). They dwelt in
heaven before the present gods arrived there, and they submitted their powers
to the supreme dominion of Indra. Both gods and Sa ̄dhyas are ruled by Indra
(AV 7. 79. 2).
There are equally old or older allusions to ‘former gods’ (karuilies siunes) in
Hittite texts. The Hittites identified them with the infernal gods of the
Babylonian pantheon, the Anunnaki, and their image is strongly coloured by
Mesopotamian myth mediated through Hurrian culture.^143 The title Former
Gods, however, seems to be specifically Hittite, and may therefore be
inherited. Like Hesiod’s Titans, the karuilies siunes are confined in the under-
world by gates which they cannot open. They are sometimes said to be seven
or nine in number, but most often twelve, like the Titans.
According to a ritual text they were driven down to the lower world by the
Storm-god, the chief deity of the ruling pantheon. In Hesiod’s account the
Titans are imprisoned at the instance of Zeus following their defeat in a war
(^142) Auraicept 1493–6 ~ 4554–6; see Watkins (1994), 463–6.
(^143) Cf. Gurney (1977), 15.
162 3. Gods and Goddesses