Cattle die, kinsmen die, oneself dies likewise.
I know one [masc.] that never dies: each dead man’s repute. (Hávamál 77)
Trenghit golut, ni threingk molut.
Riches die, fame does not die.^65
What is it that does not decay under the earth? –– The name.^66These statements express what looks to have been an enduring attitude
among Indo-European peoples from the earliest times. Fighting men were
stimulated to deeds of valour, rulers to acts of justice and liberality, not by the
prospect of rewards in the afterlife but by the anticipation of good repute in
the present and the future. Praise by poets was the most potent mechanism
for the diffusion and perpetuation of this repute. As kings and heroes of the
past lived on in their songs, in the same way the best and greatest men of
the present could hope to live on in the future. Their souls would go to join
the majority and enjoy an unending communal existence in the great house
below the earth. But they took little joy in this prospect. What fired them
much more was the desire for an immortal name, for their individual
achievements to be remembered on earth.
The key word was léwes-, reflected in Vedic s ́rávas- ‘glory’, Avestan
sravah-‘word, message’, Greek κλο‘fame, report’, Church Slavonic slovo
‘word’, Old Irish clú‘fame’, Tocharian A klyu, B kälywe‘fame’.^67 It was one of
various derivatives from the root lu‘hear, hear of ’. To be heard of is to be
famed: eillt Wyned klywer e arderched, ‘the man of Gwynedd, his excellence is
heard’ (Y Gododdin 918). Hence the participle lutó- may mean on the one
hand ‘heard, audible, sonorous’,^68 on the other hand ‘renowned’, as in Vedic
s ́rutá-, Avestan sru ̄ ̆ta-, Greek κλυτο ́ , Latin in-clutus, Armenian lu‘known’;
with matching prefix in Avestan frasru ̄ ̆ta-, Greek προ ́ κλυτο (Il. 20. 204).
The léwes- was not just something that extended between the poet and
his audience. It was a property of the person famed. It could be conferred on
him by a god, or he could put it on himself. In both cases, at least in Graeco-
Aryan, the verb *dheh 1 ‘place’ was idiomatic: RV 1. 9. 8 asmé dhehi s ́rávo br
̇
hát,
‘lay on us high fame’; 1. 40. 4 sá dhatte áks
̇
iti s ́rávah
̇, ‘he lays upon him-
self unfailing glory’; Timocreon PMG 728 Μο σα, το δε το μλου
κλο qν, = Ελλανα τθει, ‘Muse, set the fame of this song across Greece’;
(^65) Middle Welsh proverb in the Red Book of Hergest (Jesus College MS 111, late fourteenth
century); H. Pedersen, Vergleichende Grammatik der keltischen Sprachen (Göttingen 1909–13),
ii. 338.
(^66) Lithuanian riddle in Schleicher (1857), 205.
(^67) IEW 605–7; Euler (1979), 217–19.
(^68) So (with long vowel) Old High German hlu ̄t, English loud. Greek κλυτο ́ sometimes has
this sense, especially in Doric lyric; see M. L. West, Glotta 77 (2001), 128–30.
- Mortality and Fame 397