Table Of ContentHOMER AND THE
INDO-EUROPEANS
Comparing Mythologies
JULIAN BALDICK
I.B.TAURIS PUBLISHERS
LONDON NEW YORK
To Marie Baldick
Published in 1994 by
I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd
45 Bloomsbury Square
London WC1A2HY
Copyright © 1994 by Julian Baldick
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review,
this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced in any form
without permission in writing from the publisher.
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress catalog card number: available
ISBN 1-85043-831-5
Typeset by CentraCet Limited, Cambridge
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
WBC Ltd, Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
1. Comparative Mythology and the Homeric Epics 17
2. The Iliad 46
3. The Odyssey 99
Conclusions 149
Notes 161
Bibliography 170
Index I: Names of persons, deities, etc 173
Index II: Names of places 179
Index III: Subjects 181
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I must acknowledge an immense indebtedness to Nick Allen for his
generously given advice, although I know that he disagrees with much
that I have written here. I am also extremely grateful to John Penney
for devoting much time and effort to answering my queries in the field
of historical and comparative linguistics. Thanks are due to various
friends and colleagues who supplied useful information: Didier Bouil
lon, Gerard Colas, Simon Digby, Julie Meisami, Jinty Nelson, Alexis
Sanderson and Naoko Yamagata. I must also express my thanks to the
stafT of I.B.Tauris, and in particular to Anna Enayat; and, above all,
to my wife for her great patience and help.
INTRODUCTION
This book represents a radical rereading of Homer from a compara-
tist’s perspective. It argues that the Greek epics must be studied in the
light of narratives in other Indo-European languages, in particular
Sanskrit. Thus it maintains that the Homeric poems convey a markedly
Indo-European ideology and correspond to the prototypes of Indian
and Iranian epics. It does so by using the highly controversial methods
of a discipline which is often misunderstood, called ‘comparative
mythology*. Consequently, we must begin by asking various questions.
What author or authors are designated by the name ‘Homer? What is
meant by the term ‘Indo-European? And what do people in the
discipline of‘comparative mythology’ try to do?
HOMER
The ancient Greeks used the name ‘Homer’ to refer to the supposed
author of two great epics, which in the opinion of modem scholars
must have been composed between 800 and 650 BCE. One of these
epics is called the Iliad, because it is about an episode in a siege of a
city named Ilium, but better known as Troy, in what is now north
west Turkey. The other epic is called the Odyssey, since it narrates the
adventures of a hero whose name is Odysseus and who, after taking
part in the siege of Troy, encounters many difficulties, both on his
homeward journey and on arrival at his home. There has been much
debate about how many authors would have been responsible for
producing these epics. Some scholars, known as the ‘Analysts’, have
chopped the poems into bits and argued that they were the work of
many hands. Other scholars, known as the ‘Unitarians’, have counter
argued that each poem had only one author, or that both epics were
composed by the same poet. Nowadays it is generally considered that
the Iliad is essentially the work of one man, and that the Odyssey, in its
1
2 Homer and the Indo-Europeans
original form, was produced about a generation later, probably by
another man but possibly by the same one in his old age. It is not clear
whether or not the society which saw the composition of these epics
was literate. The poems would, at any rate, have undergone many
alterations as they were transmitted from one generation to the next.
A long time after they were first composed each was divided into 24
‘books’, corresponding to the number of letters in the Greek alphabet.
THE ILIAD
The Iliad begins in the tenth year of the siege of Troy, which is being
attacked by a people known as the Achaeans, who are from mainland
Greece and the Greek islands. Paris, one of the sons of Priam, the king
of Troy, has abused his position as guest of the king of Sparta,
Menelaus, to run off with his wife, Helen. Menelaus and his brother,
Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, have brought a huge expedition to
recapture the stolen wife. The poem starts with a quarrel between
Agamemnon, who is commander-in-chief, and the besiegers’ most
effective fighter, Achilles. Agamemnon publicly humiliates Achilles,
and the latter complains to his mother, the sea-goddess Thetis. She
tells him to withdraw from the fighting while she persuades the king of
the gods, Zeus, to go on granting victories to the Trojans until
Agamemnon repents. This plan is put into effect. The Trojans, led by
Paris’ brother Hector, gain the upper hand and Agamemnon tries to
propitiate Achilles, but in vain. Hector has one great day of glory, in
which he fights his way to the Achaeans’ ships. Achilles’ best friend,
Patroclus, is drawn into the fighting and kills an important ally of the
Trojans, Sarpedon, who is a son of Zeus. Hector kills Patroclus, and
Achilles, maddened by grief, agrees to fight. Agamemnon grants him
due honour, and he goes on to kill Hector and thus, by removing
Troy’s best warrior, seals the city’s fate. Hector’s corpse has to be
retrieved by his father, who comes to Achilles as a suppliant.
As we shall see, the Iliad has a lot more to offer than this briefest of
summaries would suggest. There is a subtle interplay of concepts,
represented by a wider cast of deities and mortals. Zeus’ wife, Hera,
who symbolizes sovereignty, contractuality and loyalty, is as the
firmest partisan of the Achaean cause. His brother Poseidon helps to
hold the Achaean fighting force together, assisted by a leading
terrestrial ally, Idomeneus, the king of Crete. A clever warrior-goddess,
Athena, also intervenes to give the Achaeans victory, while the Trojans
Introduction 3
have on their side Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Aphrodite’s son
Aeneas is a Trojan prince, who after the war will be his people’s king.
Troy is also protected by two more deities of pleasure: Apollo, the
patron of the arts, and Artemis, the goddess of hunting. A city of
abundance and fertility, it corresponds all too well to its arch-enemy,
Achilles, who is himself a rich and fertile source of booty.
THE ODYSSEY
The Odyssey begins in the twentieth year of Odysseus’ absence from his
homeland. His palace on the island of Ithaca has been taken over by a
number of wicked suitors, who try to persuade his wife, Penelope, to
marry one of them. The gods decide to order the goddess Calypso,
who has been keeping Odysseus on her island, to let him go. Athena
goes to Ithaca and tells Odysseus’ son Telemachus to travel in search
of news of his father. Telemachus goes on his journey and hears that
Odysseus is alive. Meanwhile, his father leaves Calypso’s island but is
wrecked on the peninsula of a people known as the Phaeacians. He is
rescued by the daughter of this people’s king, and gives his Phaeacian
hosts an account of his adventures after the siege of Troy. Odysseus
has used his celebrated powers of trickery to blind a giant son of
Poseidon; been entertained by a witch called Circe; visited the
Underworld; lost his surviving followers after they ate the Sun-god’s
cattle; and, finally, been stranded on Calypso’s island. The Phaeacians
send him to Ithaca, where Athena disguises him as an old beggar. His
faithful swineherd gives him hospitality while Telemachus returns.
Odysseus and Telemachus plot their attack on the suitors, and the
hero comes to his palace in his disguise as a beggar. Penelope
announces that she will marry whoever succeeds in stringing Odysseus’
great bow and shooting an arrow through the apertures of 12 axes.
Odysseus alone passes this test, and then slaughters the suitors, helped
by Athena, Telemachus, the swineherd and a cowherd. Then he proves
his identity to Penelope and, after a brief skirmish with the suitors’
relatives, reaches a peaceful settlement with them.
Here again the poem is far richer than its plot suggests. The epic is
mainly about how the suitors’ wickedness justifies Odysseus’ stooping
to deceit: it teaches the appalling doctrine that against evil enemies ail
is justified. Thus the suitors are the real agents of their own destruction.
Athena, as the clever warrior-goddess who masterminds their massa
cre, has Odysseus himself as her counterpart. Penelope is polyvalent:
4 Homer and the Indo-Europeans
wise, good at her work and beautiful, she symbolizes the combination
of excellence in three difFerent spheres. The Odyssey is also about the
testing of the warrior in successive areas: responding to seduction,
bravery and piety. Finally, as nineteenth-century scholars observed
(expressing themselves with unfortunate exaggeration), the Odyssey is
to some extent about the sun: it is partly based on a myth in which a
warrior-figure intervenes to give the dawn the assistance of his
strength.
THE TERM ‘INDO-EUROPEAN*
The term ‘Indo-European* is admitted by the specialists who use it to
be an absolute monstrosity. Unfortunately nobody has yet managed to
think up a better one. It is completely arbitrary: one might as well use
a symbol like ‘x*. The term is essentially linguistic: it means that many
languages, such as English, Spanish, Greek, Russian, Persian and
Sanskrit, are related to one another and constitute a separate grouping.
This kinship of languages has naturally led scholars to try to recon
struct an original proto-language from which all Indo-European
tongues would be descended: Proto-Indo-European. Consequently it is
posited that there once existed a population which spoke this language,
while further hypotheses are put forward to suggest where and when
this population might have lived. Here there has been much disagree
ment among both linguists and archaeologists, since no artefacts have
been unearthed that are demonstrably Proto-Indo-European.
With disastrous social consequences, these linguistic discussions
were taken over, from the nineteenth century, first by racist and then
by Nazi propagandists. The idea, now discredited, that ‘races* of
different human beings actually exist came to be combined (though
not by reputable scholars) with the linguistic evidence. Thus the word
‘Aryan*, which in the nineteenth century was used by scholars as a
linguistic term synonymous with Indo-European, has been misapplied
to designate an imaginary ‘race*, with distinct biological and physical
characteristics. Today the use of the term ‘Aryan* instead of ‘Indo-
European* is continued only by extreme right-wing propagandists. It
is, however, perfectly respectable to employ the term to designate the
Indo-Iranian sub-family, which includes Sanskrit and Persian, since
the ancient Indians and Iranians undoubtedly used this word ‘Aryan*
to refer to themselves.
The expressions ‘Indo-European* and ‘Proto-Indo-European* are
Introduction 5
used in confusing ways, and often the former is used when the latter is
meant. Academics talk of ‘Indo-Europeans* when ‘Indo-European-
speakers’ is what they intend: it becomes a kind of shorthand. In the
present text ‘Indo-European1 will be used in an extended sense, to
designate an ideology expressed mainly in Indo-European languages
from an early date. This does not require that such an ideology would
necessarily have been present in the hypothetical Proto-Indo-European
population: the ideology may well have been diffused from a ‘daughter-
society’ (a society speaking a language descended from Proto-Indo-
European), such as the Indo-Iranian one.
THE PROTO-INDO-EUROPEANS’ HOMELAND AND
DATE
Where would these hypothetical Proto-Indo-Europeans have lived,
and in what period of prehistory? In recent years academic debate
about these questions has been renewed, and very different solutions
have been put forward. These have been conveniently summarized by
the French archaeologist Jean-Paul Demoule in 1991. The Proto-Indo-
European homeland has been placed respectively in the Caucasus, in
Turkey and in the steppes of southern Russia. As for the period of the
Proto-Indo-Europeans, it has been normal to put it at around 4500 to
2500 BCE, though some scholars have recently proposed a much
earlier dating, which would coincide with the Neolithic invention of
agriculture and its spread from the Near East from the ninth millen
nium BCE to the fifth. Such a dating would have the Proto-Indo-
Europeans setting out from the Caucasus or Turkey. The more
conventional dating would put them first in the steppes to the north of
the Black Sea, developing an increasingly inegalitarian warrior society
in the fifth millennium, and then, from the end of that millennium to
the end of the third, invading and colonizing other regions.1
COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY
Along with the linguistic and archaeological approaches in Indo-
European studies there is also a third: the mythological. ‘Mythology*
is a confusing word, since it is used to mean not only an academic
discipline, in the sense of an organized mode of inquiry, but also the
object of that discipline, the myths themselves. ‘Myth* is another
