bolling - kandaules

7/27/2019 Bolling - Kandaules

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Linguistic Society of America

KandaulesAuthor(s): George Melville BollingReviewed work(s):Source: Language, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Mar., 1927), pp. 15-18Published by: Linguistic Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/409642 .

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KANDAUIESGEORGEMELVILLEBOLLING

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITYWith regard to the vowel of the final syllable, Hesychius offers a gloss

KavcabXas 'Epluj 'HpaKXij, and on this basis some modern scholars'distinguish a god Kandaulas and a king Kandaules. I think thatthe validity of this distinction may be doubted. Hipponax' vocativeKav6acXas the proper form to KavaabaVXs,f. AvKd/g3a,AVUKi./4rS;Kvv'yXa,KUvvY-rxs. So Hesychius, if his copyists are not at fault, has eitherformed the nominative wrongly from Kav3a6Xa2 r drawn on a non-Ionic source. For Ionic we need reckon with Kavba'X-s and withnothing else.The identification of this god with Hermes seems to rest solely onthe familiar line 4.2 (Diehl) of Hipponax: 'Epp/j KUVVXa, MKovLtorKavkaaXa nd that seems to be an improvisation.

I can find no other evidence for a 'EppuisKVVXl~, and Hesychiusseems to have known nothing to the point, for in spite of the clearetymology3 he glosses it as vaguely as KXrra. The invocation is put inthe mouth of Boupalos and is meant to be derisive, suggested by theepithet ,pyp'icpbvrnsand the fact that "Apyos s a dog's name.4 Thenit is probable that a similar twist has been given to the Maionian termKavbabV'Xs. Kretschmer rightly warns against attaching any historicalimportance to the use of MovaIrt instead of Av6aLUt;but stylisticallythe former word is high-flown and may perhaps give a hint in the samedirection. At all events the great god of the Lydians must have donesome mightier exploit than the choking of a dog, and I think it is so farsafer to interpret Kandaules merely as 'Throttler-of-the-Beast'.It was 'a dog-like monster', says Kretschmer---trusting to the literal-ness of the translation KvvaiyX7s-andt was this exploit that lead to the

1Prehn in PW 10.1860, Solmsen, to some extent Kretschmer.2 The meter does not reveal the quantity of the final vowel.3EvenTzetzes:OKUVXX07rVLKTS.4The implicit interpretation of 'Apyy'pb6vrsat so early a date is interesting andin agreement with Kretschmer's conclusions about the etymology, cf. Glotta10.45-9 1919). 15


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16 GEORGE MELVILLE BOLLINGidentification with Herakles because he too throttled a monster. Thelast seems to me right, and may take us farther. The monster thatHeracles throttled was a lion, and the lion is so prominent in Lydia thatit has been regarded as the arms of the royal family.5 We may thenassume that it was also the throttling of a lion that gave to the Lydiangod his title Kandaules, and agree (except for the unnecessary quali-fication) with Sayce, Sardis, 6.2.86 (note) that this god 'was doubtlessrepresented in art like the Babylonian Gilgames, holding a strangledlion or similar animal in either hand'. The type may be seen on aMinoan gem, so that it is also attested for the Pre-Hellenic peoples ofthe Aegean.This god became the founder of the Lydian dynasty whose membersthe Greeks called Herakleidai-having identified Kandaules withHerakles. It is probable that in it Kandaules became a titular namecomparable with Caesar, Pharaoh, Syennesis. It is true that in Hero-dotus the name Kandaules seems personal. But Herodotus himself(1.7) tells us that the Greeks called this king Myrsilos and speaks ofhim as the son of Myrsos; while Nikolaos of Damascus7 knows him(from Xanthos) as Adyattes or Sadyattes. From these facts Gelzer,8drew the essentially correct conclusion that Kandaules was a 'sacral'name. Essentially correct may be said, for 'sacral' and 'royal' areresponses to stimuli undifferentiated in such a context.The decipherment of the Lydian inscriptions has confirmed Hero-dotus' use of Myrsos Myrsilos by showing that in Lydian patronymicswere actually formed by such a suffix, cf. Bakivas, Bakivalis. ForKandaules however, they seem to have given no information.But most recently Buckler9has published a series of electrum coinsthat antedate the gold coinage attributed to Croesus and certainlyearlier than 546 B.C., the fall of Sardis. The device of the die (itappears completely on no specimen through the inexperience of itscutters) was two lion-heads confronted, with a vertical inscriptionbetween them. Thanks to a new specimen Buckler can now show thatthe inscription is Lydian and that it reads valves [walwe-S]. He thenequates valve6 with "AX-rs nd explains the legend as Gyges' cry oftriumph over the conquest of Colophon: 'The port on the Ales river

5 Cf. B.V. Head, Brit. Mus. Excav. at Ephesos 91.6JHS 21.163 (1901).1FGrHist90 F 47 (Jacoby).8 RhM 35.5172 (1880).9JHS 46.36-41 (1926)


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KANDAULES 17now belongs to the Lydian kingdom.' Against the equation valved"AXJSno objection can be brought; but the remainder of the interpretationappears most unlikely.When the inscription was imperfectly known, the practice was toconnect it with 'AXv&rr1s. That is now impossible, but it shows a factwhich Buckler himself sees,10that the natural thing to be looked for insuch a legend is a 'personal, i.e. royal, name.' I would then submitthe following considerations:1. The most probable name is Kandaules; a) as being the name ofLydia's strong-arm god, and of her ever-existing priest-king, and b)because of his close connection with the Lydian lion as Throttler-of-the-Beast.2. The obvious affinity of the device to the art type posited forKandaules by Sayce on other grounds; the vertical inscription takingthe place of the male figure, the lions being represented by their heads.3. The frequent use of ideograms and of ideograms combined withalphabetic writing in the systems of writing in vogue in Asia Minor.I should therefore suggest that the coin may offer a combination ofpicture and phonetic writing and be read as KANDvalved [Kandwalwe*S].From this form the Greek names derive readily. Epenthesis in Lydianwill account for the diphthong in Kavaab.Xs; while a form withoutepenthesis may be preserved in KavaaXoswhich long ago Wilamowitz'1recognized as the non-Hellenic name of the founder of Kos. If KavboXAosthe name of one of the KMpKOw1r7but given also as 'AvoDXos)elongshere, it has perhaps been assimilated to bo0Xosby popular etymology.The same may be true of Kav6


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18 GEORGE MELVILLE BOLLINGThe connection of the second half of the word, with OCS daviti

'choke', Lith. dovyti 'torment', Phryg. aaos 'wolf', will have to be aban-doned because the division of the compound must be Kand-valve4.It is clearly a compound in which the first member is governed by thesecond, of the type represented by Sanskrit dhanadr-jaya-. In thattype,'4 the use of a case form for the first member was original. Theuse of a stem-form is ascribed to the analogy of the determinative com-pounds"5and is dated back to the time of the parent language itself.It is not surprising to find the earlier type persisting in Lydian, and Ishould regard kand as an accusative neuter, with the well recognized -dending of Lydian.

The word kan I would still equate with IE kwon-,and the fact that theLydian word does not begin with a sibilant is no longer a difficulty.Indo-European shows no trace of a form without the w-sound,'6 andSolmsen must therefore assume a special law to account for its dis-appearance in Lydian. Starting from Kand-valves,it is easily explainedin this compound as due to dissimilation. It has been suggested byothers that the word is connected with KVcOnd meant originally 'younganimal', 'cub', 'whelp'; if so, that it should be neuter is not surprising.The change of gender will have come in Indo-European with the spe-cialized meaning 'dog'. What the word meant in Lydian must beuncertain: 'whelp', 'beast', 'monster', or 'lion', are all possible. Ifit became definitely 'lion', the semantic development would parallelthat of catulus and caniculus discussed elsewhere in this issue.

Finally valves would contain an element corresponding in form to IEwelu- seen in volvo,EXbto,etc. The meanings seem to diverge greatly,but the idea of a rolling or twisting motion may underlie both theLydian and the Indo-European senses of the words. Or the word maymean nothing more definite than 'killer', in which case Goth. walwjanshould be compared.To sum up, if we had the plainly written name of a Lydian kingKandvalves, we would unhesitatingly identify it with Kandaules, andwe could etymologize it on somewhat the same lines as I have proposed.Kandaules is the name that we have most reason to expect to find onsuch coins as those discussed. The connecting link however, the as-sumption of rebus writing, seems to me weak. Parallels for it may befound, or a better interpretation of valves. Can the latter be a shortname equivalent to Alyattes?14Cf. Brugmann 2.1.94.15Ib. 101-2.18On canis, cf. Kent, LANGUAGE .186-7 (1926).

bolling - kandaules

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