Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/320

 296 The European Sky-god.

the cock — Pausanias tells us — was sacred to the Sun, it would appear that Zeus ^ekyavo^; was a fire-god or sun-god conceived as residing in an oak.~^^ Zeus W.aKpalo<i, the " Oak "-god of the Carians and Lydians, figures on coins of Halicarnassus as a bearded deity crowned with rays and standing between two oak-trees, on each of which is a bird : the rayed crown implies that Zeus was here solar, and the two birds suggest that he was oracular. ~^^ In Pamphylia Zeus bore the title A.pvfivio<i, " he of the Oak-thicket. "~^^ In Phrygia he was Jiaja'io<i, the " Oak "-god.° At Troy grew " the fine oak of aegis-bearing Zeus," as Homer calls it, on which Athena and Apollo sat in the form of eagles.--^ At Heraclea Pontica two oaks had been planted by Heracles beside the altar of Zeus ^rpdrio^."" At Scotussa in the Pelasgian district of Thessaly Zeus was worshipped as ^7}'yovalo'i, " he who dwells in the Oak."~-'^ And in Aegina the oak beneath which Aeacus had prayed was " sacred to Zeus.""-"* In short, all round the Aegean Sea we come across traces of an oak-Zeus, i.e., of a Zeus believed to reside in or on an oak-tree.

But just as the world-tree varied from ash to oak in passing from north to south of Europe, so the tree that marked the residence of Zeus on earth differed in different localities. Substitutes for the oak were the poplar, the olive, the plane, &c., according to local changes of vegeta- tion. It should, however, be remarked that all these trees were called by names elsewhere used to denote the oak ; and further, that it is always possible to trace some botanical resemblance between the oak and its surrogate.

-'^ Class. Rev., xvii., 413, fig. 8. -'^ lb., xvii., 415 f., fig. 10. ^" lb., xvii., 419. ^^ lb., xviii., 79. «' lb., xviii., 78. ^^ lb., xviii., 79 f. ^ lb., xvii., 414. "' lb., xvii., 405.