There was another Irish hero called Conn Cétchathach, ‘Conn of the hundred
battles’.
The reduction of a stronghold sometimes, no doubt, necessitated a siege.
As Adolphe Pictet noted long ago, this is expressed in a series of languages as
‘sitting at’ or ‘around’. He cited Greek προσ- or περικαθζομαι, Latin
obsideo, Old Irish imm-said, Old English ymbsittan, Old High German
umbisizan, Lithuanian apse ̇de ̇ti, Church Slavonic obu ̆ siesti, all based on the
same Indo-European root *sed‘sit’.^23
THE HERO AS WARRIORPredicatesIn the last chapter we constructed a general profile of the hero, a sort of
curriculum vitae. We shall now look more closely at his behaviour in battle.
We can say ‘his’, because however many men may be involved in the fighting,
the tendency is always to focus on individuals, and very often on one central
hero who makes the decisive contribution. When it is necessary to speak
eulogistically of a whole corps, poets in several traditions may indicate that
they are all individually men of quality by calling them ‘chosen warriors’:
RV 4. 42. 5, ‘me (Indra) the well-horsed heroes at contest, me the chosen ones
invoke in the battle’;^24 Y Gododdin 1158–60, ‘when the nobles came ..., the
chosen men (deetholwyl) of every region in contention with Lloegr’s mixed
hosts’;Beowulf 205 f., Beowulf had with him ‘chosen champions (cempan
gecorene) of the Geatish people, of the keenest he could find’. Attila’s praises
were sung at his funeral by Hunnorum lectissimi equites (Jordanes, Getica
256).
It is a basic feature of the hero that he is a killer. In speaking of poetic
compounds in Chapter 2 we mentioned the parallel epithets meaning
‘man-slaying’ that are applied to warriors and/or warrior gods in Vedic
(nr
̇
hán-) and Homeric Greek (qνδροφο ́ νο). The Old Irish hero Conall too
is a ‘slaughterer’,oirgnech or oirgnid.
By inflicting slaughter on the enemy the hero keeps it off his own side.
With him in their front line they do not need the protection of a fortress, for
he is their defending wall. Ajax is called the aρκο ,Αχαι;ν, the Achaeans’
(^23) Pictet (1859–63), ii. 193. The preverbs in the Baltic and Slavonic compounds correspond to
the Latin ob-.
(^24) I follow Grassmann in taking vr
̇
ta ̄ ́h
̇
as the participle of vr
̇
‘choose’. Geldner takes it as from
vr
̇
‘enclose’, translating ‘wenn sie in der Schlacht umringt sind’.
454 12. Arms and the Man