Meaning
Kelon is a word of the poets. It means the shaft of an arrow, and so the arrow itself. In the oldest Greek poetry it is never an ordinary arrow: it is always something a god lets fly.
- 1A shaft, especially the shaft of an arrow; an arrow.
- 2In Homer, always in the plural (κῆλα): the arrows of a god, such as the plague sent by Apollo.
- 3By extension, anything a god sends through the air: the snow, the thunder and the lightning of Zeus.
- 4In Pindar, a figure for music: the “shafts” of the lyre that charm even the gods.
Origin
The word is very old and belongs to the language of epic. It was never the everyday term: a Greek archer would have used one of the common words for an arrow. Its deeper origin is uncertain.
The everyday Greek words for an arrow:
- ἰός ios
- ὀϊστός oistos
- βέλος belos
In the texts
The word appears at the very start of the Iliad. Apollo, angered, comes down from Olympus with his bow, and his arrows bring plague on the Greek camp.
“For nine days the shafts of the god ranged through the army.”
Elsewhere in the Iliad the falling snow is called the shafts of Zeus, and Hesiod uses the word for his thunder and lightning. Pindar, in the first Pythian ode, turns it to music: the shafts of the lyre.