Indo-European Poetry and Myth

with ‘me’ or ‘my prayer’: RV 1. 184. 2 s ́rutám me... nara ̄, ‘hear me, heroes’;

5. 
   
   
   
   78. 5; 6. 4. 7 máhi nah
       ̇
   
   
   
   

s ́rós

̇

i Agne, ‘hear our great (word), Agni’; 7. 62. 5; 8.

66. 12 s ́ávis
    ̇

t

̇

ha, s ́rudhí me hávam, ‘mightiest one, hear my invocation’; Y. 33.
11 sraota ̄ mo ̄i, ‘hearken (ye) to me’;Il. 1. 37 κλθ μοι qργυρο ́ τοξε; 5. 115 κλθ
μοι α!γιο ́ χοιο ∆ι: τκο Lτρυτ.νη; Sappho 86. 5 κλ]θ μ, Eρα, ‘hear my
prayer’; Solon 13. 2 Μοσαι Πιερδε, κλτ μοι ε1χομνωι, ‘Pierian Muses,
hear me as I pray’; in Messapic inscriptions, as an introductory formula,
kl(a)ohi Zis.^18 In Latin audio has taken over as the regular word for ‘hear’, and
in sacral formulae recorded by Livy (1. 24. 7, 32. 6, 10) we findaudi Iuppiter.
Other verbs appear by lexical substitution in post-Homeric Greek poets:
Pind. Nem. 7. 2 Ε, λεθυια... Eκουσον, cf. Bacch. 17. 53; Aesch. Eum. 844 = 877
Eϊε μ|τερ Ν3ξ.
Alternation between the second and third person is typical of the hymnic
style, and the call for a god to hear may also appear in the third person: CTH
381 i 35 numu siu ̄nes ish
̆

es ke ̄ utta ̄r... istamasandu, ‘let the divine lords hear
these my words’; RV 1. 122. 6 s ́rutám me Mitra ̄varun
̇

a ̄ hávema ̄ ́ ... s ́rótu nah

̇

... Síndhur adbhíh
̇

, ‘hear these my invocations, Mitra and Varuna ...; let
Indus hear us with her waters’; 5. 46. 6; 7. 44. 5 s ́r
̇

n

̇

ótu no daíviyam

̇

s ́árdho,
Agníh
̇

, s ́r

̇

n

̇

vántu vís ́ve mahis

̇

a ̄ ́ámu ̄ra ̄h

̇

, ‘let the divine company hear us, (and)
Agni, let all the enlightened buffaloes hear’; Y. 45. 6 sraotu ̄ Mazdå Ahuro ̄, ‘let
Ahura Mazda ̄ hear’; Aesch. Supp. 175 (quoted just below).
In a number of Vedic hymns the imperative ‘hear’ is reinforced by sú‘well’,
as in 1. 47. 2 tés
̇

a ̄m

̇

sú s ́r

̇

nutam

̇

hávam, ‘hear ye well their invocation’; 1. 26. 5
(= 45. 5; 2. 6. 1), 82. 1, 93. 1, 139. 7; 3. 33. 9; 4. 22. 10; 8. 82. 6. This idiom may
strike us as a little strange, but it is exactly paralleled in Aeschylus’Supplices:
qλλw θεο? γενται, κλ3ετ, εo, τ: δκαιον !δο ́ ντε (77); ψοθεν δ, εo κλ3οι (Ζε7)
καλο3μενο (175).
‘Hear’ implies ‘hear and respond’. If a prayer is granted, it is clear that the
deity did hear it. In Homer  #φατ, ε1χο ́ μενο, ‘so he spoke in prayer’, is
routinely followed by το δ, #κλυε (Φο4βο Lπο ́ λλων, or whichever god),
meaning not just that the god heard the prayer but that he or she hearkened
to it and did what was wanted. We find just the same in the Russian bylina
quoted on p. 278, where a princess prays to a river to let her ford it so that
she can reach her husband, ‘and the river gave ear to Marya, it let her ford it
and go to her husband’.

(^18) V. Pisani, Le lingue dell’Italia antica oltre il Latino (Turin 1953), 228–31; Haas (1962),
inscriptions B. 1. 11, 48?; B. 2. 01. 1, 03. 1, 04. 1. Zis (perhaps borrowed from Oscan) is the Indo-
European Dyeus; klaohi or klohi is held to correspond to the rare Vedic s ́rós
̇
i (Pisani), or to
derive from kleu-i
ˆ
e (Haas, 175). The Greek athematic forms κλθι (singular) and κλτε
(plural) correspond more closely to Vedic s ́rudhí and s ́róta ̄, though the expected forms would be
κλ3θι and κλετε. See Schmitt (1967), 196 f.

8. Hymns and Spells 317