Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/300

 276 The European Sky-god.

Zeus, with Persephone. Hesiod^'' bids the Boeotian farmer pray to Zeus 'xP6vio<i, Zeus " of the ground," along with Demeter. Zeus indeed was ')(66vLO<i, a subterranean god, not only in poetry ^° but in actual cult, being worshipped under that title at Olympia,^^ at Corinth,^'-^ and in Myconus.^^ Aeschylus ^^ makes Danaus assert that in the world below " another Zeus^ so men say, judgeth sins with a last judg- ment among the dead," while the chorus of Danaids declare : " If we cannot gain the ear of the Olympian gods, we will die by the noose and come with suppliant boughs to Him of the earth {rov julov), the right hospitable Zeus of the dead." An Orphic poem °^ speaks of the snake which guarded the golden fleece as " a portent of the earthy Zeus" {')(aixai,^/]\oio). And an epigram of Metro- dorus ^^ mentions "a sacrifice to Zeus of the ground" [ovhalo^;). In art too Zeus was sometimes represented as lord of the upper- and under-world alike. Thus a marble statuette in the British Museum shows him seated with the eagle on one side of his throne and Cerberus on the other.^^ In short, there is abundant evidence to prove that Zeus the sky -god had come, by whatever route, ^* to be conceived as an earth-god also.

s* Hes. O.D., 465.

9" Soph. O.C, 1606 ; Orph. hymn., 41. 7, 70. 2 ; Nonn. Dion., 27. 93, 36. 98, 44. 25S.

3' Paus., 5. 14. 8.

»- Taus., 2. 2. 8.

"' Ditlcnb.,- 615, 25, virif) KapivSiv Aii X6ovi<{), Vy XOovhj, Sepra fiiXava en'jaia.

"* Aesch. suf/)/., 230 f., 156 ff.

"* Oiph. Arg., 929, (7i]fia xni-iai^n^oio Awq.


 * '" Anlh. Pal., 14. 123. 14 Metrodorus pe^ere <?' OlSaiuj Zain dvi]iTo\ii]v.

^ Brit. Mas. Cat. Gk. Sculpt., no. 1531, Farnell, i., 105, pi. ic. : see also J. Overbeck, Griechische Kunstmythologie, i., 305 ff on " Sarapis."

^' Farnell, i., 66, suggests that " This sombre character of Zeus was probably derived, in Attica at least, from his functions as a deity of vegetation." I am far from denying the possible influence of this latter conception. Sky-god 7nay have become earth-god not only vi& sun-god but also vi& rain-god, farmer's- god, &c. But it is, I think, on the whole probable that Zeus as an earth-god preceded Zeus as a farmer's-god, ratlier than vice vcrsd.