Indo-European Poetry and Myth

Poets knew many tales of heroes, and contrasts and comparisons between
one and another must often have come into their minds. Rather than break
the integrity of their narrative by referring to a different story in their own
person, they preferred to let one of their speaking characters do it by way of
admonition to another. Diomedes relates the myth of Lycurgus to Glaucus
as a lesson against fighting an immortal (Il. 6. 130–40). Phoenix relates the
story of Meleager to Achilles as an example of the danger of nursing wrath; he
introduces it with the words ‘Even so we used to hear of the famed deeds
(κλα) of the former warrior men’ (9. 524 f.). Achilles tells Thetis he is not
afraid of death, since not even Heracles could escape it (18. 115–21). So
Narada consoled Srinjaya on the death of his son and urged the philosophical
acceptance of death with a recital of great former kings who died (MBh. 12.

29. 13–136). Agamemnon chides Diomedes for his apparent lack of zeal for
    battle by comparing him unfavourably to his father Tydeus, who always liked
    to be in the forefront, ‘as those who saw him say: I myself never met him or
    saw him, but they say he was outstanding’. A tale about Tydeus follows (Il. 4.
    370–400). Similarly Gudrun goads her sons to avenge their sister, whom
    Jormunrekk had killed, by contrasting them with her brothers:

You have not turned out like Gunnar and his brother,

nor yet so minded as Hogni was:

her you would have sought to avenge,

if you had had the temperament of my brothers

or the hard spirit of the Hun kings.^93

EVENTS ON THE FIELD

Traditional battle narrative focuses on named individuals. But the larger
picture that forms the background to the chief heroes’ efforts needs to be
sketched from time to time.
The moment when the combatants make contact is notable for the clash of
shields.

When they arrived and met in one place,

they rammed together their (shield-)hides, spears, and furies of men

bronze-corsleted; the bossed targes

closed on each other, and a great clangour arose.

(Il. 4. 446–9= 8. 60–3, cf. 12. 339, Tyrt. 19. 14 f.)

(^93) Guðrúnarhvo ̨t 3. Detter–Heinzel (1903), ii. 568, cite some parallels from the Sagas. For
another Indic example of paraenetic exempla cf. Rm. 3. 62. 7–12.

12. Arms and the Man 479