2. Horses, Heroes, and Sacrifice The prominent position of the formula ὠκέες ἵπποι and related expressions attests the special role played in Greek epic by horses and the physical abilities that distinguish them. The similarity of formulas in both Indian and Iranian oral poetries makes it clear that the phrase indicates a common poetic inheritance. It is a sensible assumption that a formula about horses that is… Read more
3. Lyric Horses I believe that it is clear that the PIE horse sacrifice ritual and the depiction of the hero in Greek epic reveal an inherited Indo-European tendency toward the hippomorphizing of humans and the anthropomorphizing of horses which continued to exert influence into the Greek Archaic period. The examples of this phenomenon that have been considered so far have focused generally, although not exclusively, on… Read more
4. Chariots and the Ἵππιος Νόμος The metapoetic charioteer introduced at the end of the last chapter is but one example of the sort of similarity in the treatment of chariots and charioteers that one is likely to find among the IE cultures. When faced with such correspondences the reader may find it difficult to accept the archaeological conclusion that chariots are not themselves a common inheritance. Read more
Conclusion To appreciate any literary subject it is best to know what came before. The scholar of Hellenistic poetry, for example, brings to bear on the subject a knowledge of Classical Greek literature and culture. Yet in the case of the earliest phases of Greek poetry we rarely have access to comparable information, so we are forced to approach the subject in a very different way. The… Read more
Appendix. Centaurs It is difficult to discuss horses and hippomorphism in Greece without mentioning the figure of the centaur, so I will not conclude this work without doing so. There is no real reason to suspect that the figure is of IE origin, and its treatment is different from that of horses themselves, yet some traces of the IE equine ideology outlined above may still be observable… Read more
Bibliography Adrados, F. R. 2007. “The Panorama of Indo-European Linguistics since the Middle of the Twentieth Century: Advances and Immobilism.” Journal of Indo-European Studies 35:129–153. Albêrûnî. 2002. Albêrûnî’s India. Trans. E. C. Sachau. New Delhi. Allan, J. 1914. Catalogue of the Coins of the Gupta Dynasties and of Śaśāṅka, King of Gauda. London. Amory,… Read more
Translators’ Preface Catherine Porter and Susan Tarrow The challenges of translating Jean Bollack’s work are well known to his fellow classicists. His work, published primarily in French, has also appeared in German, either in the author’s own text or in translation, but very little was available in English when we agreed to take on this collection. Each of us had translated one of Bollack’s essays for… Read more
[In this on-line version, the page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{69|70}” indicates where p. 69 of the printed version ends and p. 70 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look up references made elsewhere to the printed version of this book.] Foreword Gregory Nagy Introduction [1]… Read more
1. Learning to Read* When I started out, I found it hard to distinguish writing projects from re-elaborations of subject matter, and I failed to pay sufficient attention to the breaks, large or very small, that produce the meaning of a text. I gradually came to understand that these breaks allow for freedom in the act of reading, without establishing the potentialities of… Read more
2. Reading the Philologists?* By opting for philologische Wissenschaft, “philological science,” with texts at the center, and not for Altertumswissenschaft, or “archaeological science,” within the field of criticism—in a sense, against criticism and against a form of “essayism,” [1] as a way of acquiring the means for understanding—I was referring to a practice. At the same time I… Read more
