As Georges Dumézil, the leading contemporary expert on comparative Indo-European mythology, long ago demonstrated, war gods and the ideology that is associated with them played an extremely important role in the pantheons of most, if not all of the early Indo-European-speaking societies. To cite several well-attested examples: the ancient Indic war god Indra, by far the most prominent of the Vedic divinities, the ubiquitous Roman god Mars, the Greek war god Ares, and the Norse god

Þórr (Thor), thunderbolt-wielder par excellence and the most popular of the ancient Scandinavian divinities. Moreover, heroes and demigods, like Arjuna, Herakles, Siegfried, Cú Chulainn, Arthur, and Achilles, all occupied important positions in their respective traditions. Indeed, like most pastoral nomads, modern as well as ancient, the ancestors of the Greeks, Hittites, Aryans, Celts, Germans, and so forth, seem to have regarded warfare as a fundamental...