Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/294

 270 The European Sky -god.

a wheel or chariot-wheel ; sometimes, a golden cup or caldron or bed or boat or a magical ship ; sometimes, a bird, a golden lamb, a golden ram, a bull : or again it is a glaring eye in the forehead of a giant, or a man of glowing bronze who makes his circuit once a day. But it will be observed that there is a tendency to connect most of these images with Zeus. The rayed disk of Lycia, the sivastika of Crete, the triskeles of Sicily, have all been regarded as his sacred symbols. ^^ Ixion was bound to a fiery wheel by Zeus : nay more, Ixion was a by-form of Zeus himself,'*'^ who at Chios was known as Tvpdyfrio^, " He of the round wheel. "■^^ When Prometheus dared to plunge his ferule into the solar wheel,*"' i.e., to work the celestial fire-drill, it was Zeus whom he offended, for Zeus at Thurii was himself Tlpofiavdev'i, " He of the fire-drill "^'^ : according to the oldest version of the legend extant, Prometheus stole the fire directly from Zeus.** The ship Argo was built by Argus, who has been already identified with the Argive Zeus,* and had inserted in her framework a portion of the oracular Dodonaean oak* — obviously in order that Zeus might be aboard his own vessel to direct her course. Aeschylus,*^ thinking perhaps of Egypt, where the sun was symbolised by a phoenix/^^ makes Danaus say to

^ For the rayed disk on Lycian coins see Class. Rev., xviii. 327. For the swastika in Crete, ib. xvii. 410 f., Annual of the British School at Athetis, ix. 88 f. For the Sicilian triskeles. Class. Rev., xviii. 326 f.


 * " Class. Rev., xvii., 420.


 * ' Tzetz. in Lye. Alex., 537.

^* Serv. in Verg. eel., 6. 42.

^^ Tzetz. in Lye. Alex., 537. ITpo/tavOere is to be connected with the '&7}iXi^x\V p7-amantha, "fire-stick"; Ii.po\ir]QevQ, vi'iih pra/iiatha, "theft" (E. Kuhn die Herabkiinft des Fetters, p. 18 f.).

" lies. O. D., 51 f.

^* Supra, p. 265.

^•^ ApoUodor., 1.9. 16, alib.

" Aesch., sjcppl., 213 f.

Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii., 96 f., 371 f.
 * ^ p'Arcy W. Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Birds, s.v. ipoXvi^', E. A.