Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/322

 298 The European Sky-god.

eagle as he stands beneath a poplar tree.-''- And in the mouth of the Idaean Cave, where Zeus Kpr]T(vy6vi]<i was thought to dwell, there grew a marvellous poplar that was said to bear fruit.-^'^

Elsewhere the principal tree was the olive, and Zeus was connected with olives. This was the case at Athens, where Zeus Mdpto"? was guardian of the sacred olive-trees called the fioplac ekalai."'^^ That the Greeks traced a similarity between the oak and the olive is clear from the fact that they sometimes called the Valonia-oak iXaU, i.e. the " olive "-oak. ~^^ Probably, as in the case of the white poplar, it was the combination of a light surface with a dark which suggested the comparison. -'^^ Similarly a species of wild-olive termed (jiuXia is described as " resem- bling the evergreen oak." -""'' The wild-olive was sacred to Zeus at Olympia, having been brought there by Heracles from the land of the Hyperboreans to supply a dearth of trees : it had this peculiarity, that the upper, not the under, side of its leaves was white. ~^^

In Crete the finest tree is the plane.-'"^^ Tradition said that Zeus had consorted with Europa at Gortyn under an evergreen plane. This tree, on account of its remarkable foliage, Theophrastus compared with an oak growing at Sybaris ; -^° and coins of Gortyn show a female figure seated in a tree that is sometimes a plane, more often an oak.~*^

■*' Class. Rev., xvii., 418, fig. 15.

-^* lb., xvii., 407. Other examples of the poplar as a substitute for the oak in Greek mythology are cited ib., xvii., l8l, 273, 419 n. 3, xviii., 76.

^* lb., xviii., 86 f.

^•' Hesych., tkaiq ' ai'yiXwi//.

-^ The word (pavXia could denote both a kind of olive and the white poplar (Hesych. s.v. (pavXia).

"'' Hesych. s.v. cpvXdrjc.

^^ Class. Rev., xviii., 273. On the olive as a substitute for the oak see further ib. xviii., 82, n. 2.

^'^ Hock, Kreta, i., 40.

^^" Class. Rev., xvii., 404.

'-"" lb., xvii., 405.