displaced the original n-stem as the word for ‘king’: Old Irish rí (genitive ríg),
Gaulish -rix (in personal names, Dumnorix, Vercingetorix, etc.), Latin re ̄x,
Vedic ra ̄ ́j.^5
It is striking that these old terms for the king and his consort are practically
confined to the extremities of the Indo-European world, to Celtic and Italic in
the west and Indo-Iranian in the east.^6 They must be archaic survivals from
what was once a more general usage. There is in fact vestigial evidence from
the central territories, for besides Greek qρηγ.ν (if this is indeed cognate) a
form of the old word probably appears in the Thracian royal name R(h)e ̄sos,^7
and a derivative in the Thracian place-names to be mentioned below.
The Latin adjective re ̄gius‘royal’ has a parallel formation in Sanskrit
ra ̄jya-. Its neuter (H)re ̄g(i)yom made a secondary noun: RV 7. 6. 2 ra ̄jiyám
‘dominion’, proto-Celtic rı ̄gion > Old Irish ríge‘kingship, kingdom’, Middle
Welsh riyd ̄; from the Celtic came also Norse ríki ‘kingdom, dominion,
power’, Old English rı ̄c e, Old High German rîhhi (modern Reich), etc. The
neuter or the feminine appears too in place-names, no doubt marking where
the king of a region had his seat. Ptolemy records two U Ρηγαι in Ireland;
there was an Icorigium between Trier and Cologne; there was the well-known
R(h)egium in Calabria (correctly understood as βασλειον by Strabo 6. 1. 6),
besides others in Cisalpine Gaul and eastern Thrace; and, with a sound-
change matching that in the name of Rhesos, a suburb of Byzantium called
U Ρ σιον.^8
The relationship between the word for ‘king’ and the verb meaning ‘make
straight, direct’ is a strong clue to the original nature of the kingship. There is
a clear semantic connection between making things straight, drawing straight
boundaries, guiding something in a straight line, and governing justly and
efficiently. The opposition of straight and crooked is one of the most basic of
ethical images, reflected in many languages. From the same root as the verb
we have, for example, Sanskrit r
̇
jú- ‘straight, just’; Avestan ərəzu-, ərəsˇ; Old
Irish díriug‘straight’,recht‘law’; Latin re ̄ctus‘right, correct’. Using different
roots but the same metaphor, Greek speaks of !θε4α or ε1θε4α δκη, ‘straight
justice’, and can express ‘govern’ by !θ3νω, ‘make straight’. The ancient
*(H)re ̄ ́gˆo ̄, therefore, like a Greek !θυντ ρ, was a rector, a director, a corrector,
(^5) For a long time these were taken to represent the original form. Cf. for example Kretschmer
(1896), 126 f.; Benveniste (1973), 307–12.
(^6) Gothicreiks [rı ̄ks] ‘king’ is an import from Celtic, as it presupposes the distinctively Celtic
change from re ̄g- to rı ̄g-; cf. D. H. Green (1998), 150 f. Old Prussian rikis came in turn from
Germanic.
(^7) Cf. Detschew (1957), 393 s.v. Ρησκου-.
(^8) Ptol. 2. 2. 10, cf. O’Rahilly (1946), 14; Sudaρ 146, Anth. Pal. 9. 691 lemma; Detschew
(1957), 393.
- King and Hero 413