Laudator Temporis Acti

Jan Bremmer, "The Suodales of Poplios Valesios," Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 47 (1982) 133-147 (at 141):

The members of the fían, the fénnid, were regularly connected with wolfs and wild dogs, and this fits in well with the fact that among the Indo-Europeans strangers and boys who had to live away from civilised society were often called dog or wolf, or even dressed as such; this custom is found among the Irish, Germans, Greeks, Lithuanians, Hittites and Indo-Iranians (below). Moreover, among these peoples many tribal and personal names are composed with the element 'wolf' (Lycii, Lycurgus etc.), and it is hard to attribute this only to the bearers' having been criminals; it rather points to the time when they lived away from society during their initiation, or when they were performing heroic feats to prove their manhood.³⁵)

35) Wolfs and outlaws: L. Gernet, Anthropologie de la Grèce antique (Paris 1968), 154-171 ("Dolon le loup"); E. Richardson, The Wolf in the West, J.Walters Art Gallery 36 (1971), 91-102; M.R. Gerstein, Germanic Warg: the Outlaw as Werwolf, in G.J.Larson (ed.), Myth in Indo-European Antiquity (Berkeley etc. 1974), 131-156; M. Jacoby, Wargus, vargr 'Verbrecher' Wolf (Uppsala 1974); R.Schmidt-Wiegand, Wargus, in H. Jankuhn e.a. (eds.), Zum Grabfrevel in vor- und frühgeschichtlicher Zeit, Abh. Ak. Göttingen, Philol.-hist. Klasse III 113 (Göttingen 1978), 188-196; E. Campanile, Meaning and Prehistory of Old Irish Cú Glas, J. Indo-European Studies 7 (1979), 237-247; F.Graf, Nordionische Kulte (Rome 1982), the chapter on Apollo Lykeios. Personal names: E. Campanile, Ricerche di cultura poetica indoeuropea (Pisa 1977), 80-82. Tribal names: M. Eliade, Zalmoxis, The Vanishing God (Chicago/London 1972), 1-3; O.N. Trubacev, in R. Schmitt (ed.), Etymologie (Darmstadt 1977), 262-265; H. Kothe, Nationis nomen, non gentis, Philologus 123 (1979, 242-287), 274-282, 286f.

The role of the dog has been much less researched, but we may mention the Longobard Cynocephali who have been studied in a brilliant article by O. Höfler, Cangrande von Verona und das Hundesymbol der Longobarden, in Brauch und Sinnbild. Festschrift E. Fehrle (Karlsruhe 1940), 101-137; H. Birkhan, in Festgabe für Otto Höfler (Wien 1976), 36f. (on the Lithuanian 'Jungmannschaft' fighting with dog's heads); L. Kretzenbacher, Kynokephale Dämonen südosteuropäischer Volksdichtung (München 1968); Kothe, op. cit., 251, 259 (dogs and tribal names); C. Lecouteux, Zs. f. deutsches Alt. 110 (1981), 213-217.

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