Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/323

 The Eiu'opean Sky-god. 299

The plane-tree by Agamemnon's hut at Aulis, and the plane-trees planted by him at Delphi and at Caphyae in Arcadia, have probably a similar significance ; for in Laconia, if not also in Attica^ there was a cult of Zeus

Other trees are connected with Zeus on occasion. Zeus XvKdato<; was named after the fig-tree.-*'^ Zeus 'E\i/cc6z^to9, after Mount Helicon, which perhaps means the mountain of " willow "-woods (eXi'/c?/).-^^ Zeus bearing an eagle is enthroned with a palm-tree before him on a coin of Alex- ander the Great.-^^ And the use of Ato? ^aXavo^, "the acorn of Zeus," as a name for the chestnut "^^ implies that the god stood in some special relation to this tree also.

As the celestial tree had its counterpart in the terrestrial, so the sky-god himself had a visible representative on earth. The traditional epithets of the Homeric kings, "Zeus-born" (Ato7ef??'?), "Zeus-nurtured" (Aior/ae^?;?), "divine" (Aio?). "god-like" [Oeoeihrj'^, 6eoeiKe\o^, avriOeo^^ l(r66eo<;), and the stock phrase, "to honour such an one like a god" (deov 009), were doubtless conventional formulas on the lips of the Pelasgian minstrel ; but they were based on

-^- Id., x%-ii., 277. See also Botticher, Baumkidtus, p. 117. The plane as a mythical equivalent of the oak occurs also in the story of Helen : cp. the plane- tree of Helen at Sparta (Theocr., 18. 44 ff.) with the oak-tree on which she hanged herself in Rhodes (Ptolem. nov. hist., 4, p. 189 Westermann).

"*^ Eustath., 1572, 56 f. XsyiTai is Koi (rvKc'icnog Ztvg irapa toIq iraXaioTc, 6 KuQapaioQ • ry yap avKfj txp^vro, (paaiv, tv KuGapfiolQ : see Hofer in Roscher Lex., ii., 2560. Hesych. s.tj. (pvX(LT]Q says : " (pvXla is a kind of wild-olive, or according to others of fig-tree, while others again describe it as a species of tree resembling the evergreen oak."

-■" For Zeus 'EXt/cwvioc see Hes. theog., 4, and schol. ad loc. Yet one name for the Valonia-oak was 'i\i^ (Hesych. s.v) ; Call, hytnn. Del., 81 ff., mentions oaks and oak-nymphs on Mt. Helicon ; and 'AcrKjoa, the " Oak "-town, lay at its foot.

-"•^ M. W. de Visser, de Gracortwi diis 7ton referentibus speciem hufnanam, p. 122. Cp. Class. Rev., xvii., 410.

-^^ Stephanus, Thesaurus Gr. Ling, ii., 69 c-d.