Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/292

 268 The European Sky-god.

to a downpour, not only in legends, but in actual life,-^ where a sudden storm was called hLocn]^la, " a sign from Zeus," and a few rain-drops might suffice to postpone a public assembly.^^ It would also explain more than one incident belonging to an early stratum of Greek mythology. Thus it was as a fall of golden rain that Zeus visited Danae.^^ And two similar epiphanies are recorded by Pindar, whose knowledge of the details of folk-lore was only equalled by his appreciation of their beauty. Thebes, he tells us, " received the lord of the gods in a midnight snow of gold," what time he came down to woo Alcmena.'"'* At the birth of Athena, too, " the mighty king of the gods once rained snow-flakes of gold upon the town" of Rhodes.^^ Pindar does not expressly assert that Zeus was in the wondrous shower : but, that he was, is almost certain ; for another Rhodian tale made Zeus consort with the nymph Himalia Bia 6fjb/3pov, " by means of rain." -'^ The conception of Zeus-in-the-rainwater is important, because it led on to further developments. The rain formed rillets, and the rillets ran into brooks, and the brooks swelled into streams, so that Homer can call even large rivers " Zeus- fallen " (StiTreTft?)'"''^ and "Zeus-nurtured" (SiOTpe^ei?) ."^ The same connection of ideas can be traced in some of the principal Zeus-cults of Greece. The priest of Zeus Au/cato?

-' E.g. Parthen. narr. amaL, 6. 6, . II., 17. 263 schol. A. Sinrersog. . . oi yap opjipoi airb £^i6g, Od., 4. 477 schol. E. H. Q. on <pvffei oi Trorafiol tK Aibg TrXyjpovvrai, ijg ■Kov i<ptf " Kai a<piv Aiog ofifSpog dtK^i (Od., 9. Ill), Eustath., 1505, 58, StjXov yap oiQ TO iKTrivTov vSuip tK Aibg o Ictiv aipog Tvoiei AinreTi) TtoTajxov.

^ The Scamander (//., 21. 223).