Comments on comparative mythology 2, about an Indo-European background for ancient Greek myths about Hēraklēs, son of Zeus

Abstract

In the previous posting, Classical Inquiries 2020.02.14, I started to reckon with a view expressed by the linguist Georges Dumézil in a book with the title Apollon sonore, which he published in 1982, toward the end of an extraordinarily productive life. He makes it clear in this book that he views the ancient Greek myths about the god Apollo and the hero Achilles, prime mythological figures in Homeric poetry, as not Indo-European. Having spent a whole lifetime working on successful projects of reconstructing myths preserved in languages described as “Indo-European” by linguists, Dumézil must be taken most seriously whenever he says that the Greek language, which is Indo-European, preserves some myths that are decidedly not Indo-European. But his line of thinking about Apollo and Achilles can still be reconciled, I will argue here, with an alternative way of viewing ancient Greek myths about these two figures—precisely in terms of an Indo-European linguistic background. To make such an argument, however, I need to start the overall analysis not with the god Apollo and the hero Achilles but rather with the god Zeus and the hero Hēraklēs.