Being A Hero Sub Indo

[Jason]

AbstractThis paper compares Theseus and Beowulf. Both heroes come from afar, enter dangerous, underground realms, and slay ravenous monsters with magical swords. It is suggested that the two figures have a common origin and are part of the Indo-European sword-hero complex.

2. It is still not altogether clear precisely where and when the sword hero figure originated.2 Although clearly present in a number of ancient Indo-European traditions, most visibly in those influenced by the Alano-Sarmatians, it is also possible that this figure may belong to a much more ancient and widespread Eurasian epic stratum, and that its presence in Hunnish, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese mythology predates any possible contact, direct or indirect, with Indo-European speakers (Ōbayashi and Yoshida 1981, 10-13). I don't have enough space in this paper to do justice to this most interesting possibility. Rather, in what follows, I will focus on the Indo-European sword-hero tradition, and begin by looking at what I consider to be the principal Greek reflex thereof, the great Athenian hero Theseus (Θησεύς). I will then attempt to demonstrate some striking parallels between him and the Anglo-Saxon (or, more accurately, Swedish) sword-hero hero Beowulf.

5. At the same time, Theseus is comparable to those sword heroes who, like Arthur and, as we'll shortly see, Beowulf, obtain at least one mighty weapon directly from (or under) a stone or in a stony milieu, such as a rocky cave,5 without the help of a female relative. Thus, in Theseus we see a conflation of the two modes in which sword heroes obtain their iconic blades.

8. After a narrow escape from being poisoned by the ever evil Medeia, who had taken refuge with Aigeus, the young hero's sword and sandals reveal who he is, and his father happily recognizes him as his son and heir. But Theseus soon learns that Athens has a big problem. The city had recently been resoundingly defeated by Minos, the king of Crete, and is obliged to send an annual tribute of seven young men and an equal number of maidens to be devoured by the Minotaur, or to become lost and die of starvation in the famous Labyrinth at Knossos.

9. This part of the story is well known and need not be rehearsed in detail here. Theseus volunteers to be one of the tributary youths. When his ship reaches Crete, he seduces Minos' beautiful daughter Ariadne into leading him through the underground (or at least sub-basement) Labyrinth to the Minotaur, where he kills the monster (Plate 8). As Ariadne had unrolled a golden thread behind them, they are able to escape easily. En route back to Athens, however, our hero unceremoniously dumps his lover on the island of Naxos. (To say that Theseus' love life is complicated is a major understatement!) In any case, he and his band of liberated young Athenians are so overjoyed that they forget to hoist the white sail that would signal "mission accomplished," and poor Aigeus, watching from a cliff top, is so despondent that he throws himself into the sea that subsequently came to bear his name (see Note 2).

10. Theseus is now king of Athens. Like Arthur and the rest of the Indo-European sword heroes, he has fully demonstrated his right to rule by triumphantly wielding his father's sword in the name of his community. The Minoan yoke is no more.

12. After Hippolyte dies, leaving him with a son named Hippolytus, Theseus marries again, this time to Ariadne's sister Phaidra. The union ends in a well-known tragic episode that has fascinated litterateurs, from Euripides on. Phaidra falls madly in love with young Hippolytus (Plate 11). When he repulses her, she hangs herself, but not before leaving a letter implicating her stepson. Theseus curses and banishes Hippolytus, who subsequently dies in a tragic chariot accident.7 It soon becomes apparent that the boy was innocent of any deception; however Theseus' actions in this matter lead to a loss of favor in Athens. After several rebellions, he dies in exile, his glory days far behind him.

14. Yet there is yet another specific Indo-European comparison here that cries out to be made: that between Theseus and the Anglo-Saxon (at least in the telling) sword hero Beowulf. Again, the back stories are very different. The central elements of the two legends are so similar, however, that they almost certainly derived from a common Indo-European prototype.

15. The basic outlines of the Beowulf legend can be summarized briefly as follows: Beowulf, a young nephew of Hygelac, king of the Geats (see Map 2), hears that the court of the Danish king Hrothgar is being terrorized by a monster named Grendel.9 Eager for adventure, he sails with a band of warriors across the straits that separate his homeland in what is now southern Sweden from Denmark and makes his way to Heorot, Hrothgar's mead-hall. That evening, while the company sleeps, Grendel attacks, but this time he comes face to face with Beowulf. They struggle, hand-to-hand, and the Geatish hero tears off Grendel's shoulder with his bare hands (Plate 12). Mortally wounded, the monster slinks away, and the next evening, thinking all's well, Hrothgar throws a feast in honor his guest's victory.

16. Yet all is not well. After Hrothgar and the others retire for the night, Grendel's unnamed mother attacks Heorot, seeking vengeance for her dying son. She captures one of the courtiers and drags him back to the lair she shares with Grendel, which is located in a grotto beneath a lake some distance from the hall out in the fens.

17. Up to this point there are few if any clear-cut parallels with the Theseus story. Although Beowulf presumably carries a sword, he decides not to use it in the fight with Grendel. But what happens next not only closely parallels the Minotaur tale, but also establishes our hero's credentials as a full-fledged sword hero.

20. Another possible parallel between the two legends can be seen in the fact that both Theseus and Beowulf come from afar, Troizen and Geatland, respectively, to perform their noble deeds. Beowulf crosses a body of water to get to Denmark, as well as to access the monsters' lair, just as Theseus crosses the Aegean to get to the Labyrinth. Also, they both return home triumphantly by sea, to become kings. Theseus succeeds his father Aigeus as king of Athens, and, after the death of Hygelac's son and successor, Heardred, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats.

21. Also important is the fact that the monsters in question are not dragons, but rather powerful, humanoid "others."10 From the sketchy descriptions in the poem, I've always pictured both Grendel and his ferocious mother as hairy, Big-Foot-like creatures. And the Minotaur is, of course, very precisely described as having the body of a man and the head of a bull. As I just mentioned, in later years, when he has aged considerably, Beowulf and his eventual successor, Wiglaf, do slay a bona fide dragon (Plate 14), which, after the Geatish king's final sword breaks, mortally wounds him. Neither Grendel, his mother, nor the Minotaur display, however, any draconic characteristics whatsoever.

22. Finally, the monster's mother looms large in each narrative. The Minotaur's mother is Minos' queen, Pasipha. Poseidon had sent the Cretan king a beautiful white bull, to be sacrificed to him, but Minos decided to keep the animal and sacrifice another bull. Annoyed by this defiance, the god causes Pasipha to fall madly in love with the white bull. At her request, Deadalus builds a hollow wooden replica of a cow, into which the queen crawls and tricks the bull into mounting her. To everyone's horror, she gives birth to a monster (Plate 15). Subsequently, Minos has Daedalus build the Labyrinth to contain the creature. Although Pasipha herself is not a monster and does not attempt to avenge her slain offspring, I submit that her prominence in the story is yet another point of comparison.

(1) Theseus and Beowulf are not only reflexes of a common Indo-European sword-hero tradition, but also of a subset of that tradition that tells of a hero's descent to a netherworld to slay a non-draconic monster and/or its mother, one or both of whom are threatening the survival of the hero's community. And as we have just seen, the monsters' mothers play significant, albeit disparate roles in both stories.

(2) Both heroes share traits found throughout the sword-hero complex, including figures like Arthur and Batraz, who never slay monsters, draconic or otherwise. For example, swords are retrieved from rocky contexts; this includes Beowulf's fortunate discovery of a magic sword against a rock wall in Grendel's subterranean lair.

(4) At the same time, the fact that neither Theseus nor Beowulf feels constrained to insist that his weapon be consigned to a body of water before he dies clearly sets this subset of the sword hero complex apart from the one that includes Arthur and Batraz.

(5) While no female plays any clear part in how Beowulf obtains his successive swords, the fact that he wields two successive swords in the central episode of the story does suggest the two successive Excaliburs in the Arthurian tradition.

(6) Finally, although much has been written about the extent to which Beowulf is or is not a "Christian" hero, despite the obvious pagan context of the story, this aspect is irrelevant to the matter at hand. So is the extent to which the Theseus legend may contain indigenous Aegean elements (e.g., both Pasipha and Ariadne may derive from Minoan fertility goddesses). Whatever else they may be, Beowulf and Theseus clearly belong to a subset of the overall Indo-European sword-hero complex. Moreover, they also share at least some elements in common with figures belonging to other subsets of that complex.

24. In sum, I hope that the foregoing assessment of the parallels between the Theseus and Beowulf legends has managed to throw some additional light on this most important, albeit still imperfectly understood feature of the ancient Indo-European epic tradition.

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