TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

HEROES. 343
glosses, Graff 4, 983, and by names of individual men compounded
with lieri ; conf. ch. XXV, einheri. The OHG. u-recchio, hrecchio,
reecho, had also in a peculiar way grown out of the sense of exsul,
profugus, advena, which predominates in the AS. wrecca, OS.
wrekio, into that of a hero fighting far from home, and the MHG.
recke, ON. reckr is simply a hero in general. 1
Similar develop
ments of meaning can doubtless be shown in many other words ;
what we have to keep a firm hold of is, that the very simplest
words for man (vir) and even for man (homo) adapted themselves
to the notion of hero ;
as our mann does now, so the ON. hair, the
OHG. gomo (homo), ON. gumi served to express the idea of heros.
heros is glossed by gomo, and gumnar in the Edda
In Diut. 2, 314 b ,
has the same force as skatnar (see Suppl.).
Now, what is the reason of this exaltation of human nature ?
Always in the first instance, as far as I can see, a relation of bodily
kinship between a god
and the race of man. The heroes are
epigoni of the gods, their line is descended from the gods
: settir
guma er fra go<5om komo, Seem. 114 a .
Greek mythology affords an abundance of proofs ; it is by
virtue of all heroes being directly or indirectly produced by gods
and goddesses in conjunction with man, that the oldest kingly
families connect themselves with heaven. But evidently most of
these mixed births proceed from Zeus, who places himself at the
head of gods and men, and to whom all the glories of ancestors are
traced. Thus, by Leda he had Castor and Pollux, who were called
after him Dios-curi, Hercules by Alcmena, Perseus by Danae,
Epaplms by lo, Pelasgus by Niobe, Minos and Sarpedon by Europa;
other heroes touch him only through their forefathers : Agamemnon
was the son of Atreus, he of Pelops, he of Tantalus, and he of Zeus;
Ajax was sprung from Telamon, he from Aeacus, he from Zeus and
Aegina. Next to Zeus, the most heroes seem to proceed from Ares,
Hermes and Poseidon : Meleager, Diomedes and Cycnus were sons
of Ares, Autolycus and Cephalus of Hermes, while Theseus was a
son of Aegeus, and Nestor of Neleus, but both Aegeus and Neleus
1 Some Slavic expressions for hero are worthy of notice : Etiss. vttiaz,
Serv. vitez; Russ. boghatyr, Pol. bohater, Boh. bohatyr, not conn, either with
bogh deus, or boghat dives, but the same as the Pers. behddir, Turk, bahadyr,
Mongol, baghdtor, Hung, bdtor, Manju bdtura, and derivable from Vadm lively,
merry ; Schott in Erman s zeitschr. 4, 531 [Mongol, baghd is force, ia, and
-tor, -tur an adj. suffix].