Mortality and Fame
This chapter shows that fame won in battle was a major preoccupation of Indo-European poetic and narrative tradition. Indo-Europeans believed in a kind of afterlife. A limited number of great men — kings, warriors, seers, and even some women associated with them — lived on in the memory of the people, in poem and story. Topics discussed include the origin of humankind, the fates, death, and transcending mortality through fame.
Keywords: afterlife, narrative tradition, humankind, life spans, fates, death, mortality, warriors
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .