Indo-European Poetry and Myth

poem, da brat brata poznat’ ne mogasˇe, ‘brother could not recognize
brother’.^98 In this text the hero prays to God for a wind to disperse the fog,
and God obliges, just as in Il. 17. 645 Ajax prays to Zeus to deliver the
Achaeans from the obscuring mist, and Zeus does so.
We have noted in Chapter 2 the use in several traditions of compound
polyptota to portray intense corporate action on the battlefield, ‘spear against
spear, shield against shield’, and the like. Especially striking is the similarity
between the Iliad and the Maha ̄bha ̄rata in the employment of the type

Foot-soldiers were destroying foot-soldiers as they fled,

and chariot-fighters chariot-fighters. (Il. 11. 150)

Chariots engaged chariots, foot soldiers other foot soldiers,

riders attacked riders, elephants elephants.

(MBh. 4. 31. 8; further references on p. 115, n. 125)

The individual hero may find himself greatly outnumbered by the enemies
confronting him, and yet hold his own. His situation may be underlined by
thefigure of speech that consists of juxtaposing the opposed terms ‘alone’
and ‘many’ or ‘all’: Il. 4. 388 μονο $dν πολσιν μετw Καδμεοισιν
‘being alone among the many Cadmeans’, 15. 611 πλεο ́ νεσσι μετ, qνδρα ́ σι
μονον $ο ́ ντα, cf. Od. 20. 30, 22. 13; Beowulf 145 a ̄na wið eallum, ‘alone
against them all’, in this case not of a meritorious hero but of the savage
Grendel; Verba Scáthaige 13 =Tochmarc Emire 79 ba hóen fri slóg, ‘one against
an army’.
It is a commonplace that the hero overcomes large numbers of opponents
at one go.^99 Ajax ‘pierced twelve men at close quarters before the ships’ (Il. 15.
746). ‘Seven Hogni hewed down with his keen sword, and the eighth he thrust
into the hot fire’ (Atlakviða 19). ‘Eighteen, before they fell, they overcame,
Bera’s two boys and her brother’ (Atlamál 53). Haldan, attacked by a gang
of twelve men, made himself a club and killed them all; on another occasion
Olo struck down the same number with his sword Løgthi (Saxo 7. 9. 11 p. 203;

7. 
   
   
   
   11. 10 p. 212). Cú Chulainn operates on a grander scale: ‘a hundred
       warriors died by his hand... a hundred and forty-four kings were slain by
       him beside that same stream’ (Táin (I) 1012); ‘on each of the three nights that
       they were there, he killed a hundred of them’ (1235, cf. 2067). Even more
       extravagant examples can be found in other Irish sagas and in the British
       tradition. ‘Before the day [of his fatal battle] he was a hero in deeds...
   
   
   
   

(^98) SCHS ii, no. 24. 1299. In Sassountsy David 102 f. Baghdasar fails to recognize his brother in
the mêlée.
(^99) Cf. West (1997), 212.

12. Arms and the Man 481