Achilles and the Caucasus - Université de Montréal

Achilles and the Caucasus (K. Tuite) — août 17, 2007 — pg. 26
TABLE 1. THE CAUCASIAN POTNIA THÊRÔN COMPLEX.
SPACE HUMANS ANIMALS DEITIES
game animals protectress of
——— (ibex, deer) game animals
herded by (extreme of
goddess purity)
high
mountains
(antagonistic
to pollution)
INTER-
MEDIARY
(men and
caprids)
village,
household
(domestic
space)
herdsman,
hunter (chosen
lover of goddess),
warrior
woman
(impure)
goats/sheep in
alpine pastures
bovines tended
near village by
women
‘St. George’,
patron of men
exploiting
riches of
nature
goddesses of
hearth, women
(childbirth),
dairy animals
3.1.2. BATRADZ. The warrior Batradz is one of the principal
characters in the Ossetic sagas of the Narts, legendary heroes who
are said to have lived in the remote past. Batradz — the name has
been etymologized as “hero (batur) of the Ossetes (As)” (Abaev
1988) — was born from the union of the Nart hunter Xæmyts and
an unnamed shape-changing woman from the lineage of the seagod
Donbettyr (“[St.] Peter of the waters”) (Kaloev 1991b;
Dumézil 1930: 50-74). According to one version of the story,
Xæmyts catches sight of a white hare while hunting, and shoots at
it. The animal falls dead, but suddenly comes back to life and runs
on. Xæmyts kills it three more times, and each time it revives.
Finally the hare runs to the seacoast and plunges into the waters.
Some time later an old man rises from the sea and tells Xæmyts
that the white hare is in fact a transformation of the daughter of
Donbettyr, and that he is to return in a month to marry her. At the
wedding feast he is told that his wife must spend the daylight hours
inside a tortoise shell, only assuming her radiantly beautiful female
form at night (Dumézil 1978: 214). In another version she takes on
the form of a frog by day, and returns to human appearance only at