Pindar and Aeschylus’s Atharvaveda

Pindar’s Pythian Ode 4.213–219 exhibits the reflexes of a domestic love-charm, the ἀγωγή (“a spell to lead [somebody] away”). The same applies for Aeschylus’s Prometheus Vinctus 647–682 (Io’s account of her metamorphosis). In both text passages, the love-charm is described by means of a set of images, namely, the ‘arrow (of desire)’, ‘burning (fire)’ and ‘whip/goad’. While the very same associations can be found in one Atharvavedic Hymn (3.25), some characteristics of the love-charm occur in a more blurred form in an Eddic mythical episode. In both the Old Norse and Greek text passages, the submission of the beloved, caused by the love-spell, is expressed by means of the Indo-European root *demh2 - ‘to tame’