is not clear what use they are in battle except as transport. Archaeological
evidence for chariots in Ireland is in fact very slight, and some scholars have
supposed that the part they play in battle narrative represents traditional
memory of continental Celtic practice in the earlier Iron Age. In Campanile’s
view, ‘les auteurs des sagas ont rappelé à la vie un objet archaïque, antérieur à
la migration qui celtisa l’Irlande’.^73 Yet these Irish writers have a clear notion
of a chariot’s component parts, its breaking points, and the kinds of accident
liable to befall its riders.
There certainly seems to have been an element of chariot lore carried along
in the Irish heroic tradition. A. Hiltebeitel has noted that the relationship
between the hero and his charioteer is very similar in the Irish and Indian
traditions (and this is largely applicable to the Homeric picture too). The
charioteer serves not just as the hero’s driver but as his herald, friend, and
confidant, providing him with advice, praise, or criticism as appropriate.
Campanile has observed a further parallel of a technical nature: a verse of the
Atharvaveda (8. 8. 23) indicates that the charioteer stood on the right side of
the chariot, the fighter on the left, and Irish terminology points to the same
arrangement.^74
Indo-Iranian and Greek comparisons throw up certain parallelisms of
diction. There is no common word for chariot: Vedic has rátha- (the cognate
of Latin rota, ‘wheel’, Old High German rad, etc.); Avestan has both raθa- and
va ̄sˇ
̇
a- (from *varta-); the Homeric words are Zχεα (neuter plural), {ρμα,
andδφρο (the last being properly the superstructure). But both Vedic and
Greek (if we include the language of the tragedians) form phrases such as
‘well-horsed chariot’ (RV 1. 117. 2; 4. 45. 7 ráthah
̇
suás ́vah
̇; Eur. Andr. 1019
ε1ππου Zχου); ‘fine-yoked chariot’ (RV 1. 113. 14, 117. 15; 4. 14. 3 suyúja ̄
ráthena; Eur. Andr. 277 {ρμα ... καλλιζυγ); ‘chariot with yoke of four
(horses)’ (RV 2. 18. 1 rátho ... cáturyugah
̇
; Eur. Hel. 1039 τετραζ3γων
Zχων; cf. Vd. 7. 41 va ̄sˇ
̇
əm caθruyuxtəm). Indra’s chariot-horses (rathíya ̄so
ás ́va ̄h
̇
) are to bring him on his ‘well-wheeled’ (sucakré: ‘chariot’ is under-
stood, RV 6. 37. 3, cf. 10. 85. 20; MBh. 2. 54. 4); the cognate adjective is used of
a wagon in Od. 6. 58 qπ νην ... εOκυκλον, [Aesch.] PV 710 $π, ε1κ3κλοι
Zχοι (cf. Il. 8. 438, 12. 58 $υ ̈ ́τροχον α= ρμα).^75 Someone equipped with a
good chariot is surátha- (RV 1. 22. 2, al.), ε1α ́ ρματο (Pind. Pyth. 2. 5, Isth.
- 17).
(^73) Campanile (1990a), 261. For a thorough discussion of the question see J. P. Mallory in Mír
Curad, 451–64.
(^74) A. Hiltebeitel in E. C. Polomé (ed.), Homage to Georges Dumézil (JIESM 3, 1982), 92–104;
Campanile (1990b), 15–19. However, there may have been both left-hand and right-hand
chariots; see Drews (as n. 71), 126.
(^75) Durante (1976), 94.
- Arms and the Man 469