Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/305

 The European Sky-god. 281

over, with what is known otherwise of Poseidon's antece- dents. Mr. Marindin, for example, writes :^'" " Poseidon seems to have been worshipped originally by the oldest branches of the Ionic race in especial. It is possible that when they were an inland people mainly, he was the god of running streams and wells, and that as they occupied more and more sea-coast towns his worship took particularly the form, which eventually everywhere prevailed, appropriate to the god of the sea. In Thessaly, a well-watered country, without many sea-ports, his character was that of a god of rivers." There is much evidence of Poseidon as a god of rivers, springs, and wells :^^^ but, though his appearance in a dream, according to Artemidorus,^^^ portends rain, and though a scholiast on Homer^-^^ expressly connects him with the rainfall and remarks that the month of the winter rains was called IlocreiSecoj^, it is probable that the fresh-water aspect of Poseidon was terrestrial rather than celestial. That is to say, Poseidon as a chthonian god^-'^ manifested himself in the deep-sunk wells, in the springs that bub- bled up from the ground, in the streams that gushed out of the rock.^-'^ But in either case, whether the river was regarded as fallen from Zeus the sky-god or risen from Zeus the earth-god, Poseidon would be with equal pro- priety named " Zeus-in-the-drinking-water." Similarly the first element in the name of Hades appears to be ala,

'-- Smith-Marindin, Class. Dict.,i>. 751.

'=3 Preller-Robert, p. 585 ff., Gruppe, p. 1147.

'-^ Artemid. oneirocr., 2. 38.

'^ Schol. //., 15. 188, Koi verol vdfia dird OaXdrrcrtjg i^ovcn ' tcai 'Attikoi tov TTtpl x^tfiipi-ovQ rpoTrag jj.7jva 'U.oa^iSeOjva koXovctiv.

'-'•^ Preller-Robert, p. 583 ff., Gruppe, p. 11 39 f.

'-^ -E.g., Aesch. sept. c. Theb., 307 ff., ii^wfj re AipKoiov, Evrpafpscrrarov ■TTojucLTwv I ouwv 'tr](nv IloaEiSdv 6 yaidoxog, Plat. Critias, I13E, (Yi.oaei^u)v) Tr\v .... vrjrrov ola Si) Oedg ivjiaputg SieKOffinjfftv, vdara fxev Sittci vtzo yriQ avoj TTiiyaia KOiiiffag .... Tpo<t)i)v 5c. -iravToiav teal 'iKai'i)v sk rijg yi'ig avaSicovc.