by Edwin D. Floyd
It is almost a commonplace of criticism that Late Antique and Byzantine poets drew on authors such as Homer and Pindar. Inasmuch as their Classical models had utilized Indo-European patterns (cf. Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon, 1995, 369 and passim), it is not surprising that even relatively late authors continued to use arguably Indo-European material. On the whole, this phenomenon seems to have been regarded as of merely antiquarian interest when one is dealing with latish authors. Watkins, p. 459, for example, refers to Nonnos' fundamentally "Indo-European" use of himássein "to lash" as being somehow "bizarre"; in contrast, though, Watkins elsewhere (p. 369) argues eloquently for Pindar's sensitive and meaningful use, nine hundred years before Nonnos, of inherited poetic patterns. Actually, Nonnos' practice with regard to himássein, used with both Typhoeus (frequently in Dionysiaca, Books 1 and 2) and Jesus (Paraphrase 6.88), is a skillful reuse of a deep-seated poetic tradition, just as much as Pindar's transformation of a comparable pattern at Pythian 1.15-27.
In like fashion, even the premier example of an Indo-European poetic formula, kléos áphthiton "imperishable fame", first discussed by Kuhn as long ago as 1852, was creatively reused in the fourth century by Gregory of Nazianzus (1313.7), and in the ninth century by Cometas (Anthologia Graeca, 15.40.29 and 57).
Another example is provided by kléos eurú "wide fame". Used by Homer and Pindar in a way closely paralleling Rig-Veda 6.65.6, this combination reappears in eleventh to twelfth century Greek in Theodorus Prodromus, 2.13 and Christophorus Mytilenaeus, 19.17.
Still another creatively reused ancient pattern is the compound androphónos "man-slaying". From parallels elsewhere in Indo-European (Sanskrit, Avestan, and Old English), this emerges as being associated with a package of five semantic components. (See E. D. Floyd, Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series, No. 40, 2001, 168-188.) These five resonances, evident in various ways in Homer, Hesiod, and Pindar, are with (1) dangerous gods, (2) weapons, (3) murderous women, (4) baneful plants, and (5) internecine violence among gods.
The first four of these associations of androphónos are also prominent in the poetic oeuvre of Gregory of Nazianzus. Several of Gregory's uses of the word are in connection with Satan as a "dangerous god", often in association with references to the forbidden fruit in Eden as a "weapon" and "baneful plant" and to Eve as a "murderous woman". (All four associations are found together at 455.6, 893.14-894.2, and 1476.3-4).
The inherited resonances of androphónos were also developed from an essentially pagan perspective. From about the same time as Gregory, Palladas' references to the Egyptian god Sarapis' cynical interference in human affairs (Anthologia Graeca 9.378) and to the beautiful but dangerous Helen (9.166.3) are fully traditional uses ([1] and [3] respectively) of the combination "man-slaying". Likewise, Palladas' reference at 10.53.1-6 to Kronos, as someone whom Zeus would have killed if he could have, exhibits semantic association (5), viz., "internecine divine violence".