10.2307@3185205

Department of the Classics, Harvard University

A Distant Anatolian Echo in Pindar: The Origin of the Aegis AgainAuthor(s): Calvert WatkinsSource: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 100 (2000), pp. 1-14Published by: Department of the Classics, Harvard UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3185205 .

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A DISTANT ANATOLIAN ECHO IN PINDAR: THE ORIGIN OF THE AEGIS AGAIN

CALVERT WATKINS

IN a paper presented at the Hittite and Anatolian Symposium honor- ing Hans G. Gfiterbock at the American Oriental Society's meeting

of March of 1997 I argued for the diffusion to Hellas of the Hittite sacral hieratic symbol of the Hunting Bag (KU~kursas) in the second millennium, where it can be identified in the Greek sacral hieratic symbol of the aegis (aicdy), attested from Homer onward.

Since the publication of the proceedings of this symposium, due from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and edited by Aslihan Yener, is apparently delayed, and since my contribution and its presentation was addressed more to a Hittitological audience than a Classical one, I take the liberty of resuming here the main points of my argumentation, and expanding slightly the attention to the Iliad' before passing to Pindar.

That the Hittite cult object kursas designates a "hunting bag" (KUS is the Sumerographic determiner for objects made of hide) is now generally accepted, thanks to a series of iconographic and textual iden- tifications by Popko, Dinqol, Alp, and decisively by Guiterbock in the Fs. H. Kantor (1985), now reprinted in his Selected Writings (1997).2 The representation on the frieze of the stag rhyton of Norbert Schimmel collection is clear (fig. 1): between a seated deity (of uncertain identification) and a tree (probably the sacred GI~eya) are two spears, a quiver with arrows, the kursas bag with strap handle, and a stag's head and forelegs. The history of the identification was set forth by Gregory McMahon in 1991,3 who provided a valuable account of the character-

1 First presented in seminar in Spring 1996. 2 H.G. GUiterbock, Perspectives on Hittite Civilization: Selected Writings of Hans

Gustav Giiterbock, ed. Harry A. Hoffner Jr. (Chicago 1997). 3 Gregory McMahon, The Hittite State Cult of the Tutelary Deity (Chicago 1991).



2 Calvert Watkins

istic double nature of the kursas in Hittite religion and cult: it is at once a real and palpable physical object, and a mystical hieratic symbol identified with a divinity.

As an object, the hunting bag is usually made of leather, most fre- quently goatskin (KU MAS.GAL), and specified as "rough, shaggy" (wariui-), i.e., a fleece with the long curling hair of an angora (= Turk- ish Ankara) goat still on it. The bag has a strap handle by which it can be hung on a peg, with the contents accessible. These cultic objects, goatskin bags, are periodically "renewed" (aippa newabb-) and recy- cled, a sort of immortality or symbolic rejuvenation, just as the king's form or image is ritually "renewed" with the same verb in other early texts.

But the KUSkursas as a hieratic symbolic object in the Hittite realm of myth functions as a kind of cornucopia filled with a variety of abstract goods. The texts are familiar, and mostly from Old Anatolian vanishing god myths. The passages are clearly formulaic, and follow the same recurrent syntactic pattern and order. Each is narrated when the vanished god has returned and reestablished the harmony of the earth and the kingdom. From a version of the Telepinus myth, KUB 33.12 iv 2 ff.,

"Telepinus took account of the King: Before Telepinus stands an eya-tree; From the eya-tree a sheepskin hunting bag is hanging.

In it lies Long Years In it lies Progeny, Sons and Daughters In it lies Growth of Mortals, Cattle (and) Sheep, In it lies Manhood (and) Battle-Strength, In it lies Eternity [ In it lies Integrity (and) Endurance, In it lies Assent (and) Obedience, In it lies Satiety

Telepinus lifted it up for the King, And he gave him all good things."

Other versions differ only in detail, sometimes including Sheep Fat and Grain, Beast (and) Wine among the good things, and in the main text of



A Distant Anatolian Echo in Pindar 3

Fig. 1. Frieze on the Stag Rhyton, Norbert Schimmel Collection, after Perspectives on Hittite Civilization (see n. 2)

the disappearance of Telepinus after "Long Years (and) Progeny" omit- ting "Sons and Daughters" and adding

In it lies the Gentle Message of the Lamb.

The linguistic structure of the verbal formulas is invariant:

n=asta ANDA ... kitta connective + locatival particle IN ... lies.

The verb (= Greek KEcrat) is always singular, even with plural subject. The latter syntagma is of course known in Greek as the

oXfig•a Htv-

8aptuc6v. I suspect the Greek construction is diffused from Anatolian. With the same IN and the cognate of Hittite kitta compare Pindar's P 10.72 (the "envoi"): v 8' &ya0oi'ot csiFrat

ax;ptcwat IsCeval, 7o•i•v

The allegorical entities symbolically inside the sacred KU~kursas, the shaggy hunting bag, are mostly the good things which in the Hittite view follow from a just and righteous ruler; they are the good things of PEACE, of FERTILITY (DUMUME?-atar "progeny" a neuter abstract built on the word for "son"), and the characteristics of the victorious ruler in WAR, Manhood (LU-natar = pisnatar) and Battle-Strength (tarhuili[-).



4 Calvert Watkins

In earlier days in Hittite studies the KU~kursas was translated "skin, fleece" or "shield," as still in E. Neu's Glossar of 1983.4 Giiterbock5 noted that "since it was mentioned together with weapons, it was thought that kursa might be a shield, an idea obviously influenced by the thought of the aegis." But there is nothing wrong with the semantic and cultural identification of KU~kursas and

aiyt•, for the aegis or

aobig in Homer is not a shield. Kirk in his Iliad commentary (ad 2.447 ff.) states,

Exactly how the poets of the epic tradition imagined the aegis is a difficult question.... It is probably a goat-skin in some form, for that is its obvious etymology (so e.g. Chantraine, Dict. s.v.)[6]; it is put round the shoulders ... like a sword(-strap), 5x II., or a shield(-strap).... In classical art Athene's aegis is a skin thrown over the shoulders like a small shawl.... 7

Athena's aiyg; as depicted on the Amasis neck amphora (fig. 2) looks very like a bedjacket, except of course for the snakes (which are a Greek innovation, see below).

We first meet the aiyt; in Iliad 2.446 ff., borne by Athena as she inspires the marshaled host of the Greeks:

aiy• ' xooa' 0pi1t"gov daypIov &Odvairlv te,

fij icaTbv E0oavot tayzpGoSot ilep`0ovrat, nave; E-n)nXICEE;,

9 •icax6•tpoto;

8 Eiaoao;"

obv "tit natpaooovoa 8t&ourto ,abyv

'AXatdov

b6rplovto' i~vat.

oav ftit is the phrase for the WEAPON/COMPANIONS of the basic formula of the Hero's great exploit; recall also obv tOt of Agamem- non's scepter borne by Odysseus in the same function in Iliad 2.187.

4 E. Neu, Glossar zu den althethitischen Ritualtexten (Wiesbaden 1983 [Studien zu den Bogazk6y-Texten 26]).

5 Giiterbock (above, n. 2) 138. 6 While the "obvious" relation of aiyig to ai% might be a folk etymology, it would still

be synchronically valid. Etymology is a notoriously uncertain indicator of cultural phe- nomena like these, and I am not interested here in the etymology of either ai4g; or

KU~kursas. 7 G. S. Kirk, The Iliad: A Commentary 1 (Cambridge 1985).




Fig. 2. Athena wearing the aegis. Amasis Painter, c. 540 B.C. Paris, B. Nationale



6 Calvert Watkins

Note the expressive verb with intensive reduplication and the arresting phonetic figure in Sun tji paiphaSSouSa dieSSuto: it is immortal like the "renewed" kursas. And the commonest Homeric formula for the

aegis (5x II.) is the hemistich aiyi8a Ouoaav6eoaav with the same word 06aavo; that Pindar will use in P 4.230-231 of the tufts of the likewise immortal golden fleece:

potvrov oaproqvav &ayaoem Kioa; aiya&ev Xpua~xot OuGdv"t

The formulaic similarity of the aegis and the golden fleece might well

argue for a common source for both (as long suspected). I do not insist. Suffice it to note the physical similarity of the shaggy (warhui-) kursas of goat or sheepskin with the fleece or tufted hair showing, and the

goatskin aiyi; or the deep-fleeced (pa06iuakkov) sheepskin ic~xa; or

vaico; with its tufts or tassels showing. Another passage, Iliad 15.306-310, describes Hector leading the

Trojan charge, while Phoebus Apollo went before him (np6a0ev •i8d '

abroi3) just as a Hittite god goes before (peran huwai-) the king in victorious battle. Apollo held the impetuous (Ooiptv), terrible (86tviv) aegis with shaggy fringe all around (&Lpt8a&oetav), again like Hittite

warhui-. The aiyi; knows no sides: Hephaistos gave it to Zeus to put warriors to rout (-; (p6pov &v8p6ov), whether Anatolians or Greeks.

Like the Hittite KU~kursas, the aiycg has a double nature: it is at once a physical object and a symbolic container of allegorical entities. In Iliad 5.733-742 Athena sheds her gown onto her father's floor, dons her armor, and throws on the aegis; "A voluptuous gesture ... the actions symbolize her transformation from peaceful goddess to goddess of war."8

A,&rxp 'Arjlvail, Kodprl Atb0; aiytd6oto, inkxov pv KarF•evy davv y iapb0 "in' oi•8et,

nrotdixov, 6v Ia' a&bri notaioazo iCal I Kc E•poltV

i 58 Xt8ov' v6Goa At"b vpexerlyep"ao

E•E ,atV i6 XlqEOv Oopiouae'ro aKxpu6ev1a. &Pi8 6)' ap'

6Sitotatv I pXCz' tiyi8&x Ouavkeaav

8tvriv, •iv rEpi nptv niv-J 06 oq Ea(YrE(PdVoZ•at,

Kirk (above, n. 7) ad loc.




ev 86' "Ept;, Cv 8''AXlicr, v & KpudEoaa ioni ev &-re Fopyeill ce(paxoh 8•tvoio next~pou, 8Etvii Er opaepivij 're, At60 -rpa; aiyt6"oto.

The passage is demarcated by the ring of the two occurrences of the epithet aiyt6ooto, equidistant from aiy(•a Ocuoav6kaaav and filling the slot between bucolic dieresis and line end like the epithet Ouaaa-

v6oE•av. In Iliad 5.733-742 we see for the first time the shaggy goatskin aiy;( containing abstract allegorical symbols. The phobos "fear, panic, rout" which we saw above (Iliad 15.310) is now embodied in the aegis itself. Two images are interwoven in the description. One is modeled on a real shield, like that of Agamemnon in Iliad 11.35-37, with a picture of the Gorgon, and around it Terror and Fear.9 But the other is wholly abstract, the series of abstract allegorical symbols of battle and war which are IN Athena's tasseled goatskin, and linked by anaphoric iv 8&.

Compare also from the Shield of Achilles (Il. 18.535):

'Ev 8' "Ept;, ~v & Kuvotipb; 6•LXeov, v 8'

60,oi1 Krip

In it were engaged Strife, in it Tumult, in it deadly Fate;

or especially from the Shield of Herakles of Ps.-Hesiod 154-156,

'Ev & Hpoito" -e aii ree Haow;o ev 6' "Oga66; -e (D"o; r''Av8poK-raai1 re 8E$ist ev 8' "Ept;...

In it Attack and Counterattack were wrought, In it Tumult and Panic and Slaughter were ablaze, In it Strife ...

where we find a plurality of conjoined abstract subjects but a singular verb (cf. II. 6.329).

Though again I do not insist, it is hard not to hear the very echo of the repeated Hittite

9 A•i6g r 'E I6Do; re, recalling the common Hittite pair Nalsaraz and Weritemas "Fear" and "Terror." For many examples see the Chicago Hittite Dictionary s.v. na haratt-. Here independent creation is at least as plausible as borrowing or diffusion.



8 Calvert Watkins

ANDA... ANDA... ANDA...

in the Greek

EN D(E) ... EN D(E) ... EN DE

Though they may be independent creations, the repeated anaphora in each is a descriptive fact.

We have seen in Hittite culture allegorical figures of PEACE, FER- TILITY, and WAR which are symbolically IN (repeated anaphoric ANDA) a hieratic sacred object, the KU~kursas. We see here in Early Greek culture allegorical figures of WAR and battle which are symbolically IN (repeated anaphoric Av 8&) a hieratic sacred object, the aiy1q. Yet another fundamental background theme intersects those of both WAR and PEACE in the Iliad, and that is SEX.10 In one other place in this epic we find allegorical figures of SEX, linked by the same anaphoric Av 8&, which are IN another hieratic, sacred object: Aphrodite's magic embroidered thong (iKcarobv igdv-ra), which she loans to Hera in the Deception of Zeus (Iliad 14.216):1'

v0O' ivt )

lV PiX6tri;, v 68' i• epo; , Ev 8' 6apta-6;

Though the focus here is on pure seduction-love, desire, intimacy- the image is not far from the Hittite's 'ANDA lies progeny, sons (and) daughters.'

Greek tradition, both verbal-mythological and iconographic, knows that the Gorgon's head figures on Athena's aegis, as in Homer, or later on her shield. The same tradition knows how it got there, i.e., that it is a Greek innovation: Perseus gave the Gorgon's head to Athena, and she put it on her shield (Apollodorus 2.4.3). Now it is at least curious that in Greek mythology the Gorgon's severed head will first be put in a hunting bag, called the

Kd-tat;, clearly a loanword, which the slayer Perseus got from the nymphs along with his winged sandals and his cap of invisibility. The word Ki~tat; is glossed as nfipa, animal skin bag. In its first attestation, the Shield of ps.-Hesiod 224, the Kiptat; is slung

10 Compare the formulaic II. 1.490-491 oire nox' ei; &ryop~lv inXOaiocero ... o0re

no'' A 6

6~tdkov ... with h.Ap. 329 ei; ebvilv noAoogLat.

I Pace R. Janko in his Iliad commentary ad loc., II. 18.483 and 535 are not directly comparable, since they are verbal, not nominal, sentences.




over the hero's back (with the head in it), and it is described as silver, with golden tassels hanging from it. They are the same 01oavot that hung from the aegis (and the golden fleece), and the Gorgon's head is physically IN the functioning hunting bag (a'itota) in the myth just as it is symbolically IN the aiyi' of Athena.

All this looks very much like an Anatolian, Hittite hieratic sacred object, the shaggy goat or sheepskin hunting bag kursas being bor- rowed or diffused, directly or indirectly, into the mythology and legend of a geographically contiguous culture, both in its literal sense of "hunting bag," the Iditoat, and in its symbolic sense of hieratic sacred emblem, container of abstract allegorical entities, the aiyi'. The Gor- gon's head is a later accretion of Greek tradition to the aiyi, however firmly established in literature and art from the earliest period. The arguments for a similarity relation between the second-millennium Anatolian facts and the first-millennium Greek facts rest on three independent variables: the formal-visual(shaggy, goatskin container), the functional (hieratic symbol or emblem of power, container of abstract allegorical entities), and the verbal (semantic coincidence of epithets; the transparent Greek name [even if a folk-etymology]; the repeated anaphora anda/v & in each). Such detailed and systematic similarities can be explained only by universality, by common inheritance, or by borrowing/diffusion. There is no justifying evidence for either of the first two; we must assume the third.

Now Pindar provides two striking examples of "adverbial" Cv &' repeated in anaphora, as duly noted and cited in Slater and Hummel: O. 13.22-23 and Dith. 2.10-17 (fr. 70b.10-17).12 But the unique character of the passages has not yet to my mind been adequately appreciated. Both of these two very careful and authoritative writers list the anaphoras in Cv 86 together with examples of single, isolated adverbial ev (86, re). All of the latter may also be and have often been explained as cases of tmesis, i.e., the disjunction of P(reverb) and V(erb) of a compound verb.

These facts point to a special character of the instances of adverbial ev 8' in anaphora in Pindar, twice in 0. 13.22-23 and three times in Dith. 2.10-17, always in sentence or clause initial:

12 William J. Slater, Lexicon to Pindar (Berlin 1969) 174, and Pascale Hummel, La syntaxe de Pindare (Paris 1993) 174.



10 Calvert Watkins

0. 13.22-23 'v & Moio' 6&6invoo;, Av 8' "Aprlq &v0e~ v~ov

o•,Xiat; aixLtanotv a&viplov

Dith. 2.10-17 iv & KEXha6[Ev] Kp6dra' ai0ooitva R e &aix inab

4avaOdo t RobEat; Ev &8 NaiGov pyoiyGounot orovaxai taviat ' &kaXak a ' 6p"ve'rat ttta•Xevt oav

K•avaOt. Av 8' 6 inayipari ; ipauviw &agnv(ov inp KEVriv[rat r6 r]'Evuakiou YXo~, ...

In the first instance these might be Homerisms, recollections of the repeated 'v 6(E) of Iliad 5.740-741 and 14.216 cited above, of Athena's aegis and Aphrodite's embroidered thong (KEx-rbv igtvra). Yet it is remarkable that two of the four verbal sentences with 'v &5 anaphora have the same "signature" Pindaric scheme as the Hittite-like Av 5' &yaOoitt Keirat ...

.•gPEpvactnE of Pindar's P. 10.71-72.

The presence of Athena with her aegis is not far from either passage. The first (0. 13.22-23) is preceded by the praise of the inventiveness of the Corinthians: their receipt from the Horai of apxaia aopio(tara "inventions of old" posed as three rhetorical questions:

rai Ataoviaou ndO6ev ~Fpavev

abv pol0,krat

Xdptre F8t0upapjPnt; tig

7yP inJUiot; Av 'vrEoatv wt ipa,

ii `ev vaoTotv oi(v~lv paoatXa &68tigov

The questions are thus: 1) whence (no60ev) the delights of Dionysus with the ox-driving dithyramb? 2) who (rig yap)13 added the curb (bridle) to the horse's gear? 3) or [who added] the "twin king of birds"

(oi(ovwv paothda it&•ugov) to the temples of the gods? The answer to

13 B.K. Braswell, A Commentary on the Fourth Pythian Ode of Pindar (Berlin/New York 1988) ad 70-71, notes the "Epic" introductory use zig there and inter alia in O. 13.20. I add that in these two passages with rig yap Pindar's sequence rhymes with Homeric rig rap (reading with the Venetus A [ad II. 1.65 et passim] and Wackernagel) in

comparable invocations (II. 1.8, 2.761, etc.), on which see C. Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics (Oxford 1995) 150.




the second will shortly be revealed in the myth of the Corinthian

Bellerophon (63-92), to whom Pallas Athena gave the magic gold banded bridle to subdue the winged horse Pagasos: she "the maiden of the dark aegis," icduvatyt; ... nap0Evo;. The adjective seems to be a hapax; the virtual synonym g~hEX6vatyt; is found in A. Th. 699 (lyric) of 'EptvziS, and it or the former is conjectured by Lobel in Pi. fr. 215b.7 ]vatytv XO6v' (P. Oxy. 26, 2448 [1961]).

The Dithyramb passage continues directly (after 'yxo; 14) with the image of Athena and her aegis: a&ic6eaad [t]E lfla••2 o; aiyi; o)vov poyydtetat cayyaiS Spaic6vtov. With

&Xicdk•aa compare Homer's v C ' &cXi i.

That Pindar shows an associative link, perhaps deriving from Homer, of repeated anaphoric Av &' and Athena's aiyt`, is clear. But the associative link may reach even deeper, and that independently of the Homeric tradition. For both passages with Av &' are overtly or covertly connected with Asia Minor, that is, Anatolia.

In the dithyramb the link is overt. The Av &' passage cited is preceded by (Dith. 2.5-9)

icKai nap aicK&[n]ov At0 Oi;pavtiat •v gedYapot; i'oaavti. aetgv&t t

gv Ka-drpxet MatEpt .nap Mey6Xwat p6•t4ot itna"6vov, Ev E...

The venerable Great Mother (aogv&at ... Maipt inap Mey6~,at)

who presides by her presence is none other than Kybele, the Anatolian goddess DKubaba of the second millennium, whose cult continued into the first millennium as attested in Hieroglyphic Luvian in Northern Syria, as well as in the Phrygia more familiar to the Greeks. The repeated kv &' are all epexegetic to "what sort of rites of Dionysus" (cf. also ppogt- a6t Ootvat Dith. 1 = fr. 70a.11): from the whirling of tambourines to the other instruments and the ecstatic cries we could be reading the pro- gram of a great Hittite festival, an EZEN in its Sumerographic form.

In 0. 13 the link is rather covert. The three rhetorical questions posed in 18-22, ostensibly in honor of the Corinthians' inventiveness, have in fact no immediate answer: "mention alone is enough," as Braswell comments ad P. 4.70-71. To the second the answer will be the Maiden of the Dark Aegis, Athena, as we saw, who bestowed the (magic) bridle on Bellerophon. It is scarcely much of a Corinthian



12 Calvert Watkins

invention, so stated. The ostensible answer to the first, whence did the joys of Dionysus appear with the ox-driving dithyramb, is "from Corinth"; and so perhaps Pindar himself believed, or intended his audience to believe. But the origins of verse forms and genres is notoriously uncertain and obscure, and subject to mythologization, and the lines could also refer obliquely to the presumed exotic origin of Dionysus and the poetic manifestation of his cult, just as the actual dithyramb 2.5-18 does. Finally, we come to the third question: who added the twin king of birds to the temples of the gods? We are told by the scho- liast tradition that the Corinthians initiated the placement of eagles as decorative finials at the apex of each end of the Doric temple-hence "twin, double." Pindar himself can say iUnxp aineoi "above the pedi- ment" of the legendary third temple of Apollo at Delphi in Pae. 8.70 (fr. 52i). Yet here again another reading is possible at the same time: that the oiovtv p3aatoa 81ugov is an echo of the "double-headed eagle" as quintessential emblem of authority in second-millennium Hittite Anatolia, from seals to the monumental image on the right-hand block of the fourteenth-century sphinx-gate at Alaca Hiiytik.14

Traditional themes are transmitted by verbal formulas and by associative semantics: juxtaposition, associations, context of words, phrases, and images. Such verbal and semantic networks are suscepti- ble of transmission across time in a way partly similar to, but partly quite different from, the transmission of ordinary natural language (grammars): continuous recreation, but in directed response to the same repeated external stimuli, memorized phrases and formulas. In the men- toring of a special social group of "professionals of the word" whose function is, inter alia, precisely the preservation and transmittal of these cultural networks, some very precise and complex associations can be preserved over very long periods indeed.

Homer preserves the nexus of the cultural emblem called the aegis, its material form, symbolic function, and associated ritual verbal behavior, anaphoric Av 8E, from the time of its presumptive diffusion from the Anatolian culture that engendered it in the second millennium. But in Homer there is no hint of this diffusion itself or of an exotic origin. Pin-

14 On these see Joshua T. Katz, "Hittite ta-pa-ka-li-ya-<as>" (with rich bibliographical references), to appear in the proceedings of the 1998 Indogermanische Gesellschaft Col-

loquium in Pavia, ed. Onofrio Carruba. Katz promises a further study of the implications of the double eagle for Greek literature and culture; he first presented "some details" to the American Philological Association in December 1995 (see Abstracts, p. 43).




dar on the other hand, a few centuries later but a member of the same class of "professionals of the word," not only associates the identical ritual verbal behavior, anaphoric Av SE, with the cultural emblem of the aegis-in this he could perhaps just be following Homer-but also indexes both occurrences of the same Av &8 formula with overt or covert references to an exotic origin, specifically Anatolia.

The references "make sense" in his own time, of course, whether in relation to the reverend Great Mother or the figure and cult of Diony- sus. And in 0. 13.18-22 the praise of Corinth and its A&paita ao~pitaazta is certainly genuine. But I would suggest that the ultimate reason for Pindar's selection of the three Corinthian inventions of the dithyramb, the bridle and bit, and a temple decoration-scarcely a "natural class"-is that all three shared in his mind arbitrary links with Anatolian tradition: dithyrambic festivals of Dionysus in the presence of the Great Mother; Athena of the Dark Aegis giving the bridle in a dream-itself an action more typical of Anatolian myth than of Greek-to Bellerophon, founder of the line of Glaukos of Lycia; and the double eagle motif of Anatolian glyptic and monumental iconogra- phy. It is this Anatolian tradition behind the three rhetorical questions intended to apply to Corinth, associatively linked with the aegis and the ritual verbal behavior, which drives the immediately following themati- cally balanced anaphoric pair (0. 13.22-23):

ev & Moiaoa &S6ivoog, ev 8' "Apr; &v0ei voI v oiXt aiat ailotva &v86pv.

There flourish the arts of Peace and War, of the Muse and Ares: in Corinth to be sure, but the Av &8 formula also marks the theme as Ana- tolian. It is the same balance as that of the hymn in strophic style given in the Old Hittite Bauritual KUB 29.1 iii 29-34, some twelve hundred years before Pindar:

The Throne says: "When you plaster a house inside, Plaster Long Years, Plaster Wealth; But when you plaster it outside, Plaster Fear, Plaster Dominion."



14 Calvert Watkins

As I stated, the house is a microcosm of the Hittite world, the city and the kingdom, at once in peace and at war: facing in, Longevity and Prosperity; facing out, Authority and Mastery. They are "in" two sides of the same wall.

Pindar of course knew nothing of such hymns. But I suggest that he did know at some level of a tradition which linked repeated Av &5 anaphors to Anatolia, to the hieratic object and symbol which is the aegis, and to allegorical (Dith. 2) and symbolic (0. 13) subjects of nominal or verbal sentences including those with animate plural subject and singular verb. The Pindaric scheme is a construction found in Ana- tolian Hittite and Luvian, where it is anchored by a syntactic constraint: the animate plural subject cannot have a determiner.15 Pindar's tradition here may well continue a syntactic feature diffused from Anatolian. The construction is unknown in Homer. In other cases as well Pindar's tradition of theme and formula is independent of Homer's, as in the Indo-European medical doctrine in P. 3.47-53, or the formula TRUST in HOSPITALITY (ni'not0a aeviat, IE *bheidh- *gh(o)s-).16

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

15 Compare in a Middle Hittite letter from Kusakh recently edited by G. Wilhelm, MDOG 130 (1998 [1999]) 175-187: ... arkies' iddlaweikitta [3 sg.] nu=wa kj iarkiev kisandati [3 p1.]; i.e., ". .. (the) signs were turning out badly [3 sg.]; these signs occurred [3 pl.]." I will discuss the phenomenon elsewhere.

16 For both see Watkins (above, n. 13) 81-84, 537-539.



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