Not surprisingly, the best way to learn about the Indo-European context of ancient epic is to read and think about texts from as many Indo-European traditions as possible. In this chapter I have concentrated for practical reasons on Homeric Greek, while comparing in some detail phrases and stories from the Indic Rigveda and Mahabharata and casting more than just a passing glance at Anatolian. Both classicists and those who do not know Greek will find useful the revised bilingual Loeb Classical Library editions of the Iliad (Murray 1999) and Odyssey (Murray 1995). Unfortunately, there is no complete and reliable rendering into English of the major Sanskrit works: until Joel Brereton and Stephanie Jamison come out with their long-awaited translation of the entire Rigveda, Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty’s 1981 Penguin edition of some of the major hymns is the place to start; as for the Mahabharata, the fourth fat installment in a projected ten-volume edition has appeared (Buitenen 1973, 1975, and 1978 and now Fitzgerald 2004). For a good introduction to Hittite literature, see Hoffner 1998a.
The next best way to find out about the subject is to peruse the finest scholarship there is on Indo-European poetics and try to learn by example what sorts of questions interest linguists and what techniques they use to arrive at answers. The clearest exposition of the fundamental principle known as the Comparative Method remains Meillet 1925/1967; reliable textbooks on historical/compara-tive linguistics in general include Anttila 1989, Hock and Joseph 1996, and Campbell 1999; and Fortson 2004 examines the Indo-European languages specifically. The leading practitioner of Indo-European ‘‘genetic intertextuality’’ broadly conceived is Calvert Watkins, whose oeuvre is worth reading cover to cover: note especially C. Watkins 1995 and the papers collected in vol. II of Watkins 1994.
A Companion to Ancient Epic Edited by John Miles Foley Copyright © 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
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