Agathyrsi of Transylvania, perhaps a Dacian people, sang or chanted their
laws ‘so as not to forget them’. In Gaul the administration of justice, accord-
ing to Caesar, lay in the hands of the Druids, the custodians of all tradition
and poetic wisdom. Law-tracts in verse are among the oldest documents of
Irish literature, law being the speciality of one class of fili.^118
Gnomic verse is well attested in Indic, Greek, Latin, Irish, Old English, and
Norse.^119 In the case of Hesiod’sWorks and Days, the prime representative
of the Greek tradition, we must certainly admit the influence of parallel
traditions in the Near East.^120 On the other hand, his formula ‘I am going to
tell you... Put it in your heart’ (σ7 δ’$ν? φρεσ? βα ́ λλεο σHισιν) has close
parallels in the Ga ̄tha ̄s and Old Norse that may suggest common inheritance:
sa ̄xvə ̄nı ̄... mraomı ̄ ...: mə ̄n
̇ca ̄ı ̄ [ma ̨z]dazdu ̄m.
These prescriptions I speak... Commit them to mind.
móður orð ber þú, mo ̨gr, heðan,
ok lát þér í briósti búa.
Take away your mother’s words, lad,
and let them dwell in your breast.^121The similar Homeric formula Eλλο δ τοι $ρω,σ7 δ’$ν? φρεσ? βα ́ λλεο
σHισιν, ‘I will tell you another thing, and do you put it in your heart’, may
have originated in gnomic poetry of the type where successive sections
began with the same formula, as in the maxims of Phocylides each section
beganκα? το ́ δε Φωκυλδεω. An Old English gnomic poem in the Exeter
Book is presented as being the wisdom that a wise father taught his son, and
the sections are introduced by ‘The experienced father again addressed his
son another time’, ‘A third time the wise man with his breast-thoughts taught
his child’, and so on until ten lessons have been reported. In the twelfth-
century Proverbs of Alfred each of twenty-eight sections is introduced with the
formula þus quað Alfred.^122 In Odin’s instructions to Loddfáfnir in the
Hávamál (112–37) each stanza begins
Ráðomc þér, Loddfáfnir, at þú ráð nemir:
nióta mundo, ef þú nemr,
þér muno góð, ef þú getr.(^118) Solon fr. 31; Clem. Strom. 1. 16 78 = Terpander test. 40 Gostoli; Ael. Var. hist. 2. 39;
Hermippus fr. 88 Wehrli; [Arist.] Probl. 19. 28; Caesar, Bell. Gall. 6. 13. 5; Dillon (1948), 172 n.
31; (1975), 114; Campanile–Orlandi–Sani (1974), 239–41.
(^119) See West (1978), 15–20. Cf. Campanile–Orlandi–Sani (1974), 241 f.; Campanile (1977),
86–8.
(^120) West (1997), 306 f.
(^121) Hes. Op. 106 f., cf. 10/27, 274, 688; Y. 53. 5; Gróugaldr 16, cf. Hugsvinnsmál 129.
(^122) M. L. West, JHS 98 (1978), 164 f., where a Sumerian parallel for this format is also cited.
- Poet and Poesy 71