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*Kóryos

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The kóryos (Proto-Indo-European: *kóryos, "army, people under arms" or "detachment, war party") is a term referring to Proto-Indo-European brotherhoods of warriors in which unmarried young males served for a number of years, in the context of an initiation rite into manhood.

Subsequent Indo-European traditions and myths feature parallel linkages between property-less adolescents as an age-class, contrasting with married men seen as full members of the community; the association of the former with landlessness and promiscuity; their service in a "police-army" raiding foreign communities and defending the host society; their identification with wolves and dogs as symbols of death, lawlessness and fury: and the idea of a liminality between invulnerability and death on a side, and youth and adulthood on the other side.

Etymology and name

The Proto-Indo-European term *kóryos denotes a "people under arms" and is generally translated as "army, war-band, unit of warriors",[1] or as "detachment, war party".[2] It derives from the root *kóros ("cutting, section, division"), attested in Old Persian as kāra ("people, army") and in Lithuanian as kãras ("war, army").[2][3][4]

The term *kóryos has descendant cognates in the Greek kouros ('youth, boy'), Baltic *kāryas ('army'),[note 1] Celtic *kóryos ('troop, tribe'),[note 2] Germanic *harjaz ('host, troop, army, raiding-party').[note 3][9][2][10] The Gallic tribes Uo-corri ('two-armies'), Tri-corii ('three-armies') and Petru-corii ('four-armies'), were presumably formed from alliances of roving war-bands.[7][11] In West Central Indo-European dialects, the designation *koryonos ('leader of the *kóryos'; here attached to the suffix -nos 'master of') is also attested: Ancient Greek koíranos ('army leader'), Old Norse Herjan (< PGmc *harjanaz; 'leader of the army'), and Brittonic Coriono-totae.[12][3][11][7]

Additionally, the Asturian personal name Vacoria (similar to Gaulish Vocorius) has been interpreted as stemming from a Celtic ethnic name *(d)uo-korio ('possessing two armies'),[13] and the Gallic tribal name Coriosolites as the 'troop-watchers', composed of corios attached to the root soli- ('[good] sight').[14]

In Indo-European studies, the modern German term Männerbund ("men-band") is often used to refer to the *kóryos,[15] although it can be misleading since the war-bands were composed adolescent males, not grown-up men. Some scholars have proposed the terms Bruderschaft or Jungmannschaft as preferable alternatives.[16][17]

Description

The kóryos were composed of adolescent males (12–13 up to 18–19 years of age), usually coming from prominent families, initiated together into manhood as an age-class cohort.[18] After undergoing painful trials to be able to join the group, they were sent away to live as landless warriors in the wild for a number of years. The young males went without possession other than their weapons, living on the edges of their ordinary host society.[19] Social behaviour normally forbidden, such as stealing, raiding or sexually assaulting women, were therefore tolerated amongst kóryos, as long as the malevolent acts were not directed at the host society.[20] Their activities were seasonal, and they lived with their households for a part of the year, perhaps engaged in herding animals and other forms of farm labour.[21]

Their life was centred on military duties, hunting wild animals and pillaging settlements, and on the recitation of heroic poetry telling the deeds of past heroes and cattle theft legends.[19][22] A tradition of epic poetry celebrating heroic and violent warriors who win loot and territories, which were portrayed as the possessions gods wanted them to have, probably participated in the validation of violence among kóryos. The leader of the band was determined with a game of dice, and the result accepted as the gods’ choice. The other band members pledged to die for him, and to kill for him.[23] He was regarded as their master in the initiation rite, and also as their "employer"; the young warrior served as his bodyguards and protectors.[24]

The period of initiation within the kóryos was perceived as a transitional stage preceding the status of adult warrior and usually crowned by marriage.[25] The kóryos were symbolically associated with both death and liminality on one hand, and with fecundity and sexual license on the other.[19] McCone has argued that members of the *kóryos, initially serving as of young unmarried males without possessions, were eventually incorporated into the *teutéhₐ- ("the tribe, people under arms"), which consisted of property-owning and married adult males.[26]

According to Anthony and Brown, the kóryos could have functioned in three ways: "as an organization promoting group cohesion and effectiveness in combat, as an instrument of external territorial expansion, and as a regulatory device in chiefly feast-centred economies."[27]

In Europe, those oath-bound initiatory war-bands were absorbed by increasingly powerful patrons and kings during the Iron Age, while they got downgraded in ancient India with the rise of the Brahmin caste, leading to their progressive demise.[17]

Attributes

Wolf-like behaviour

The war-bands consisted of shape-shifting warriors wearing animal skins to assume the nature of wolves or dogs.[28][29][30] Members of the kóryos adopted wolfishly behaviours and bore names containing the word "wolf" or "dog", each a symbol of death and the Otherworld in Indo-European belief.[31] The idealized attributes of the kóryos were indeed borrowed from the imaginary surrounded the wolf: violence, trickery, promiscuity, swiftness, great strength and warrior fury.[32] By identifying with the wild animals, kóryos members perceived themselves as physically and legally moved outside the human world, and therefore no longer constrained by human taboos. When returning to their normal life, they would feel no remorse for breaking the rules of their home society because they had not been humans or living in the cultured space of the host society when those rules were broken.[23]

The Yamnaya Kernosovskiy idol, depicting a naked warrior with a belt, axes, and testicles (mid-3rd mill. BCE); and the Celtic Warrior of Hirschlanden (6th c. BCE), wearing only a helmet, neckband, belt, and sword.[33][34]

Their appearance was also characterized by nudity, especially among Germans and Celts, who were depicted as fighting naked or semi naked, armed only with light weapons.[30][35] At the battle of Telamon (225 BC), Gallic warriors wore only trousers and capes, and Celtiberian statuettes from the 5th–3rd centuries BC depict naked warriors, with a sword, a small round shield (caetra), a "power belt", and sometimes a helmet.[36] The Berserker were sometimes said to be naked and to scorn the use of armour.[35] Thracian warriors were depicted with berserk attributes on silver coins ( 335–315 BC) showing a bare-chested, kilt-clad Thracian infantryman, and Livy (171 BC) describes Thracian warriors as "loudly yelling, and furious like long penned-up wild animals".[37] Ancient Italic tribes also had in their ranks berserk-like warriors who fought naked, barefoot, flowing-haired, and often in single combat.[38]

In Ancient Greece, the wolfish ways of fighting were reserved to the adolescent groups passing the warrior initiation. Young members of the Athenian ephebos and the Spartan crypteia were able to use war techniques usually forbidden to the adult warrior: they covered their actions and prowled at night, using tricks and ambushes.[39] The ephebos in particular were under the patronage of the god Apollo, associated in many myths with wolves and the epithet Lykeios.[40]

The folklore concept of werewolves ("men-wolves") found in the Germanic, the Slavic (*vьlkodlaci ‘wolf-haired ones’) and the Baltic (Lithuanian vilktãkai "running as wolves") traditions is probably reminiscent of the wolfishly behaviour of the warrior-bands.[41] During his initiation, the Irish mythical hero Cuchulainn, a typical depiction of the kóryos member, changed his youth name from Setantae to "hound of Culainn".[42] The young members of the Ossetic balc were strongly associated with the wolf and portrayed as a k'war (" herd").[43] The Norse berserkers are sometimes called úlfheðnar ("wolf-skinned"),[44] and the frenzy wolf warriors wearing the skins of wolves were named ulfhedinn ("wolf coat").[45] The Avestan literature also mentions mairyō ("wolf, dog") as the young serving in warrior-bands.[43]

Warrior-fury

The conflicting opposition between death and invulnerability is suggested by the associated qualities of the kóryos (great strength, resistance to pain, and lack of fear).[24] The the typical state of warrior fury or frenzy was supposed to increase his performance above natural expectations,[35][46] with ecstatic performances accentuated by dances and perhaps by the use of drugs.[46]

The Indo-European term for a 'mad attack' (eis) in common to the Vedic, Germanic, and Iranian traditions.[47] The Germanic berserkers were depicted as practitioners of the battle fury ("going berserk", berserksgangr), while the martial fury of the Ancient Greek warrior was called lyssa, a derivation of lykos ("wolf"), as if the soldiers temporarily become wolves in their mad rage.[46][48][49]

Young men were perceived as dangers for their host society. The Irish hero Cúchulainn becomes for instance becomes a terrorizing figure among the inhabitants of the capital-city, Emain Macha, after he has beheaded three rivals from his own people (the Ulaid). They capture him and plunge his body into basins of water to "cool him down". Some Greek warrior-bands were called hybristḗs (ὑβριστή) and portrayed as violent and insolent groups of ransomers and looters. Irish texts also depicts some warrior-bands as savages (díberg), living like wolves by pillaging and massacring.[42][50] The Vedic mythical Maruts were also depicted as both beneficial and dangerous entities.[24]

Colour

The kóryos is usually associated with the colour dark, or at least dark,[30] and with the mobilization of chtonic forces, escorted by frequent references to the "black earth" and "dark night".[51] Hunting and fighting at night were also their distinguishing characteristics of the kóryos.[52]

Indra and his followers, as well as Rudra and his followers, wear black clothes. The young heroes were called "black youths" (t‘ux manuks) in medieval Armenia. The army of the Armenian mythical model of the kóryos leader, the "black" Aram, suddenly attacked its adversaries "before dawn" in the borderlands of Armenia.[52]

The Athenian ephebes traditionally wore a black chlamys,[51] and the Ancient Greek tradition featured an initiatory ritual imposed upon young males in which "black hunters" were sent out to the frontier to perform military exploits.[53] Indeed, the Greek model of the black hunter, Meleager, is named after the Greek term for "black" (melas),[54] and the Armenian name Aram stems from *rē-mo- ("dirt, soot").[55]

The Roman historian Tacitus (1st c. AD) mentions the Germanic Harii (whose name perhaps derive from *kóryos) as "savages" wearing black shields, died bodies, and choosing dark nights for battle.[56][57] Kershaw has proposed that they were indeed the kóryos of the neighbouring Lugii tribe.[58]

Role in the Indo-European migrations

Scholars have argued that the institution of the kóryos played a key role during the Indo-European migrations and the diffusion of Indo-European languages across Eurasia.[59] The raids led by the young men could have led to the establishment new settlements on foreign territories, preparing the ground for the larger migration of whole tribes including old men, women and children.[60] This scenario is supported by archaeological data from the early Single Grave–Corded Ware Culture in Jutland, expanding on the territory of the Funnelbeaker culture, where 90 per cent of all burials belonged to males.[21]

The kóryos probably drove people not protected by the Indo-European social umbrella to move under it in order to obtain safety or restitution from thieving and raiding. They could therefore have served as an incentive for the recruitment of outsiders into social positions that offered vertical mobility, horizontal reciprocity, and the possibility of immortality through praise poetry, made more attractive by generosity at patron-sponsored public feasts.[61]

For instance, the Viking raids lasted for two centuries before a definite colonization occurred in modern-day Britain, France, or Russia, and Vikings were made up of groups of young people led by an adult male during a three-year campaign overseas.[62] The social group consisting of the grown-up men (the "former youths") only joined the formation where time had come to settle the conquered lands.[63]

Archeology

Krasnosamarskoe

At Krasnosamarskoe (Volga steppes) were found 51 dogs and 7 wolves sacrificed and consumed in what could be an initiation into a status represented metaphorically by the animals, suggesting the practice of a winter-season ritual of transgressive liminality between adolescence and manhood.[64] The site is associated with the Srubnaya culture (1900–1700 BC), generally regarded as Iranian, and possibly made up of archaic Iranian speakers.[65]

Krasnosamarskoe appears to have been a place where Srubnaya people from around the region came to engage periodically in male initiation rituals, conducted in the winter, and requiring dog and wolf sacrifice.[66] According to Anthony and Brown, "it was a place of inversion, as is the eating of wolves, animal symbolic of anti-culture (a murderer ‘has become like a wolf ’ in Hittite law; ‘wolf ’ was used to refer to brigands and outlaws, people who stand outside the law, in many other Indo-European languages."[66] The dogs themselves seem to have been well-treated during their lifetime and were probably familiar pets.[67]

The ritual was centred on dog sacrifice, in a region and time period when dogs were not normally eaten.[64] Cattle and sheep were indeed consumed throughout the year on the site, whereas dogs were killed almost exclusively in the winter in a repeated inversion of normal dietary customs (killing and consuming dogs).[68]

Stelae

Most kurgan stelae in the region featured a man along with a belt and weapons carved on the stone. In later Indo-European traditions, like the warrior figures found in Germanic and Celtic art, *kóryos raiders wore a belt that bound them to their leader and the gods, and little else. The tradition of kurgan stelae featuring warriors with a belt is also common in Scythian cultures.[34]

Indo-European traditions

Vedic and Indic

In the Vedic tradition, boys began the initiation at 8. Wearing only a belt and an animal skin, they studied heroic poetry about past ancestors and practiced their hunting and fighting skills. At 16, they were initiated into a warrior band during the winter solstice ritual (the Ekāstakā), in which initiates went into an ecstatic state and ritually died to be reborn as dogs of war.[69] After a dice game had determined their leader, the male adolescents went in the wild for four years to live as dogs, stealing animals, women, goods and territory until the summer solstice ended the raiding season.[70] The warriors then returned to their forest residence where they held a Vrātyastoma sacrifice to thank the gods for their success.[71] At the end the four-year initiation, a final Vrātyastoma sacrifice was performed to transform the dog-warrior into a responsible adult man, and the initiated males destroyed their old clothes to become human once again, ready to return to their family and live by the rules of the community.[72]

The Vrātyas ("dog-priests") were known for performing the Ekāstakā ceremony at the winter solstice, when Indra, the god of war, is said to have been born with his band of Maruts. The term Vrāta is used in the Rigveda to describe the Maruts.[73][74]

Iranian

The Scythians led military expeditions as a mandatory initiation into manhood which lasted for several years, as evidenced by historical raids in Anatolia.[75][76]

In the Ossetic tradition, a compulsory initiation into manhood involved a military expedition of one year, known balc. Groups were formed during spring feast (Styr Tūtyr), dedicated to the master of wolves and warriors, and the initiation rites took place in Varkazana (the "month of men-wolves"; i.e. October–November), during the feast of Wastyrgi.[77]

Greek

In Ancient Greece, the traditional war-bands have lost some of the element of frenzy that characterizes shape shifters in other culture, although they still maintained the terror inspiring appearance and the tricky war tactics of the original kókyos.[78]

The Athenian Ephebos had to live during the 2 years (17 to 20 years old) in the ephebeia (ἐφηβεία).[79][40] Relegated to the edges of society, they were given a marginal status with no full citizenship. Their duty was to guard the limit of their during peaceful times (guards of fields, forests, orchards). The Ephebos wore black tunics and were lightly armed, and they led ambushes and skirmishes in war time.[79][40] Essential part of their training was the traditional hunt, conducted at night with the use of snares and trap. In the case of Spartan Krypteia, it was even a human hunt.[80]

The Spartan Krypteia consisted of young men called agelai ("herds") and led by a boagos ("leader of cattle").[81] A similar formation, the Irenas (ἰρένας) were in charge of overseeing Helots and assisting in the krypteia.[29][79] The Greek colony of Taras is said to have been founded by a group of 20-year-old Spartan Partheniae who were refused citizenship to encourage them to leave and found a new city elsewhere.[63] Herodotus mentions the story of Aristodemus, who fought courageously but was refused the recognition as best fighter by the Spartans because he got "mad" (lyssônta) and abandoned the formation, suggesting that Ancient Greeks thought that berserk-acting warriors had no place in the phalanx formation.[57]

Germanic

In the 13th-century Icelandic Volsunga Saga, Sigmund trains his nephew Sinfjotli to harden him for later conflicts by sneaking with him through the forest dressed in wolf skins, thieving and killing. At the end of the initiation, as they were ready to return to a normal life, they removed their wolf skins and burned them, as in the Vedic tradition and at the archeological site of Krasnosamarskoe were canid remains were burned.[19]

The Celto-Germanic tribal societies of Gallia Belgica and Germania Inferior probably included similar organizations of young men at the beginning of the Common Era, which because of their military nature represented a politically significant force. For instance, the Batavian god Hercules Magusanus was regarded as the patron and protector of the Batavorum iuventus, a kind of paramilitary organization preparing young men for the soldier's life. They also served as a supplier of auxiliary troops for the Batavian legions.[82]

Italic

The Italic Ver Sacrum involved the departure of an entire age group in order to found a "colony". The story of the Mamertines and the Roman Ver Sacrum dedicated in 217 by the decimviri sacris faciundis explicitly state that participating members were young people.[63]

Celtic

In the Irish Fenian Cycle, the fianna are troops of warriors recruited among young people to watch over Ireland as an army-police led by the mythical hunter-warrior Finn. They had to live outdoor in the woods and hills of Ireland from May to October, feeding themselves only by hunting. From November to April, the fianna went back to their family farms scattered over the island.[83]

Armenian

The manuks ("young warriors") are mentioned in the story of the legendary founder of Armenia Hayk. His descendant, Aram, interpreted as the "second image of Hayk", heads an army of 50,000 norati ("youths") warriors, extending the borders of Armenia on every side to create a new, superior Armenia.[84] Contrary to Hayk, who is fighting his adversary within the territory of Armenia, Aram makes war in the borderlands and beyond the borders of Armenia. The young warriors of Aram could be interpreted as a reflex of the kóryos, and Hayk's soldiers as the depiction of the adult men in arms.[52]

References

Footnotes

  1. ^ OPrus. kargis 'army' and caryago 'military campaign'; Lith. kãrias 'war, army, regiment'; Latv. karš 'war, army'.[5]
  2. ^ Gaul. corios, 'troop, army'; MIr. cuire ‘troop, host’; Wel. cordd 'tribe, clan'.[6][7]
  3. ^ Goth. harjis 'army'; ON herr 'army’; OE here 'army'; OHG hari 'army, crowd'; OS heri 'army'.[8]

Citations

  1. ^ Mallory & Adams 2006, pp. 278, 282, 284.
  2. ^ a b c Ringe 2006, p. 76.
  3. ^ a b Mallory & Adams 2006, p. 284.
  4. ^ Kroonen 2013, p. 212.
  5. ^ Derksen 2015, p. 226.
  6. ^ Matasović 2009, p. 218.
  7. ^ a b c Delamarre 2003, p. 126.
  8. ^ Kroonen 2013, p. 211.
  9. ^ Kershaw 1997, p. 22.
  10. ^ Mallory & Adams 2006, p. 282.
  11. ^ a b West 2007, p. 449.
  12. ^ Kershaw 1997, p. 15.
  13. ^ Prósper, Blanca María (2014). García Alonso, Juan Luis (ed.). Continental Celtic Word Formation: The Onomastic Data. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca. ISBN 978-84-9012-383-6.
  14. ^ Falileyev, Alexander (2010). Dictionary of Continental Celtic Place-names: A Celtic Companion to the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. CMCS. pp. entry 1002b. ISBN 978-0955718236.
  15. ^ Sergent 2003, p. 12.
  16. ^ Falk 1986.
  17. ^ a b Anthony & Brown 2019, p. 101.
  18. ^ McCone 1987, p. 107–108; Mallory 2006, p. 93; Kristiansen et al. 2017, p. 339; Anthony & Brown 2019, p. 111
  19. ^ a b c d Anthony & Brown 2019, p. 111.
  20. ^ Sergent 2003, p. 16; Mallory 2006, p. 94; Anthony & Brown 2019, p. 111
  21. ^ a b Kristiansen et al. 2017, p. 339.
  22. ^ Cebrián 2010, p. 343.
  23. ^ a b Anthony & Brown 2019, p. 116.
  24. ^ a b c Sergent 2003, p. 16.
  25. ^ Sergent 2003, p. 16; Loma 2019, p. 3
  26. ^ McCone 1987, p. 111–114.
  27. ^ Anthony & Brown 2019, p. 117.
  28. ^ Kershaw 1997, pp. 257, 262.
  29. ^ a b Cebrián 2010, p. 355.
  30. ^ a b c Mallory 2006, p. 94.
  31. ^ Anthony & Brown 2019, p. 111; West 2007, p. 450; Loma 2019, p. 2
  32. ^ Sergent 2003, p. 16; Anthony & Ringe 2015, p. 213; Loma 2019, p. 3
  33. ^ Speidel 2002, p. 262.
  34. ^ a b Anthony 2007, p. 364–365.
  35. ^ a b c Cebrián 2010, p. 344.
  36. ^ Speidel 2002, p. 264.
  37. ^ Speidel 2002, p. 265.
  38. ^ Speidel 2002, p. 266.
  39. ^ Loma 2019, p. 3.
  40. ^ a b c Cebrián 2010, p. 352.
  41. ^ Loma 2019, p. 2.
  42. ^ a b Ivančik 1993, p. 313.
  43. ^ a b Ivančik 1993, p. 314.
  44. ^ West 2007, p. 450.
  45. ^ Speidel 2002, p. 15.
  46. ^ a b c West 2007, pp. 449–450.
  47. ^ Speidel 2002, p. 277.
  48. ^ Lincoln 1991, p. 131.
  49. ^ Cebrián 2010, p. 346.
  50. ^ Sergent 2003, pp. 18–19.
  51. ^ a b Sergent 2003, p. 17.
  52. ^ a b c Petrosyan 2011, p. 345.
  53. ^ Vidal-Naquet 1986.
  54. ^ Vidal-Naquet 1986, p. 119.
  55. ^ Petrosyan 2011, p. 348.
  56. ^ Kershaw 1997, pp. 66–67.
  57. ^ a b Cebrián 2010, p. 347.
  58. ^ Kershaw 1997, p. 68.
  59. ^ Sergent 2003, p. 23; Anthony & Ringe 2015, p. 214; Kristiansen et al. 2017, p. 339
  60. ^ Sergent 2003, p. 23; Anthony & Brown 2019, p. 111
  61. ^ Anthony & Ringe 2015, p. 214.
  62. ^ Sergent 2003, pp. 10, 22–23.
  63. ^ a b c Sergent 2003, p. 10.
  64. ^ a b Anthony & Brown 2019, p. 97.
  65. ^ Anthony & Brown 2019, p. 103.
  66. ^ a b Anthony & Brown 2019, p. 100.
  67. ^ Anthony & Brown 2019, p. 98.
  68. ^ Anthony & Brown 2019, pp. 97, 100.
  69. ^ Kershaw 1997, pp. 203–210.
  70. ^ Kershaw 1997, p. 251.
  71. ^ Kershaw 1997, p. 209.
  72. ^ Kershaw 1997, p. 63.
  73. ^ Kershaw 1997, p. 231.
  74. ^ Anthony & Brown 2019, p. 112.
  75. ^ Sergent 2003, p. 9.
  76. ^ Ivančik 1993, p. 318.
  77. ^ Ivančik 1993, p. 319.
  78. ^ Cebrián 2010, p. 356.
  79. ^ a b c Sergent 2003, p. 22.
  80. ^ Cebrián 2010, p. 353.
  81. ^ Cebrián 2010, p. 354.
  82. ^ Roymans 2009, p. 233.
  83. ^ Sergent 2003, p. 15.
  84. ^ Petrosyan 2011, pp. 343–344.

Bibliography

Further reading

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