the work of Calvert Watkins, that “towering figure” from my Sanskrit days who scoured a dozen Indo-European languages to ultimately conclude that the soma ritual of the Rigveda and “the ritual act of communion of the Eleusinian mysteries, by women for women,” were one and the same, “just too striking for a fortuitous resemblance to be plausible.” From this very passage of Homer about Circe’s kukeon and her pigs, Watkins was able to extract the holy language “describing a religious ritual.” He called it “a liturgical act” stretching back thousands of years, perhaps to the Proto-Indo-Europeans
...more
