Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/299

 The European Sky -god. 275

a spring in the Ammonium, whose waters were cold at noon but warm in the morning and evening, was called the " Fountain of Helios " ^^ and was apparently thought to be heated by the presence of Zeus beneath the earth. Simi- larly at Dodona Zeus had an intermittent spring, which at midday, when the sun was high over head, ceased to flow altogether, while at midnight, when the sun was deep underground, it was at its fullest : ^° so potent were its solar virtues that unlighted torches when brought near to it burst into flame.^^ Moreover, the Ammonium and Dodona were the two most famous oracles of Zeus. It would seem that the solar god having seen all things by day with his unwinking eye ^" retires by night to his nether home, whence by the agency of his interpreters he sends up knowledge to those that would know. This explains why the great oracular gods of the Greeks were Zeus and Apollo : ^^ both of them were solar. Helios ^^ too, like Zeus ^^ and perhaps Apollo,^^ was 7ravofi(f)alo<;, a god " of all prophecy," and had been known to foretell the future in Rhodes. ^^ Other oracular powers were, practically without exception, chthonian in character. But that Zeus was believed to reside under the earth is no mere surmise. The Iliad^^ associates Zeus Kara'^Qovio^^ the "underground"

" Hdt., 4. 181, alib.

^^ Plin., nat. hist., 2. 228 ; cp. Etym. Magn., 98, 22.

^' V\\n.,ib.; Pomp. Mel., 2. 3. 43 ; Aug. de civ. Dei, 21. 5 ; Isidor., orig., 13. 13. 10 ; Lucr., 6. 879 ff.

^- Supra, p. 272 f, cp. Od., 1 1. 109, 'HeXi'oii, oq ttuvt' i(popq. Kal navr eVa/coiEi and the references given in Roscher, Lex., i., 2020, 11 ff.

285 ff.
 * ' See the list of Greek oracles in Smith-Wayte-Marindin Diet. Ant., ii.,

''' Quint. Smyrn., 5. 626, ^^^e\ioio TTavoiii^aioio.

^ II. , 8. 250, TravofKpaiiij Zijvl piZiCKOv 'Axajoi, Anth. Pal., 6. 52. 2 Simonides, Orph. Arg., 658, 1296.

^ If Hermann's Travoi-tcpdiov is rightly read in the hyi7in. Horn. Merc, 473 ; but see T. W. Allen and E. E. Sikes ad loc.

" Diodor., 5. 56.

^ II., 9. 457, ZevQ re KaTa^QovioQ Kcd tTraivi) TJepaecpovtia, cp. Etym. Magn., 409, 7 f.

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