Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/401

 The European Sky-god. 371

Agamemnon as judge '^ bears the sceptre of Zeus. This was an oaken staff or spear {hopv) of peculiar sanctity, as we gather from the account of it given by Pausanias : ^ " The god whom the Chaeroneans honour most is the sceptre which Homer says Hephaestus made for Zeus, and Zeus gave to Hermes, and Hermes to Pelops, and Pelops bequeathed to Atreus, and Atreus to Thyestes, from whom Agamemnon had it. This sceptre they worship, naming it a spear ; and that there is something divine about it is proved especially by the distinction it confers on its

owners There is no public temple built for it, but

the man who acts as priest keeps the sceptre in his house for the year; and sacrifices are offered to it daily, and a table is set beside it covered with all sorts of flesh and cakes." Now C. Botticher^ has proved from this and analogous usages elsewhere that a tree-god was often represented by a sceptre, or lance, or staff. It may be regarded as certain, therefore, that the royal sceptre, which conferred the right of judgment, was simply a conven- tionalised form of the oak of Zeus : ^° hence both in literature

■^ Cp. Eustath., 25, 5, (TrjfitTov Si jSaaiXeiag Kai Xoyiov Kat ^t'/cijc Kara, rovg ira\a(ov£ to aiciJTrTpov ijV. ' Ayafxi f^iVMV ts yap 6 evpVKpeiuiv 'loTarai aKrJTrrpov t)(iov, Kal Ti]\efia.xi[> CirjiiijyopovVTi cicwcri tiq ffKrJTTTpov ' (jjcravri^c Kal A^iXXti'ic St]iJ.7]yopwv ffKrJTTTpov «x^*- ^ ^' «i'i'0C dStK)]9eiQ kut avTov ofivvcriv wq avfifiokov TrJQ SiKTig, II5^> I' '<^«' (TKJjTrrpa Se ou jxovov (iaaiKivaiv aWa Kai SiKacnroXoig. tan yap to aKfjirrpov oii fionov jiaaiKeiaQ aWa Kal Gs/jliSoq avfifioKov. In//., 9. 155 f. Agamemnon promises that the people shall honour Achilles "with offerings like a god, and beneath his sceptre shall fulfil his bright judgments." Od., II. 568 f., describes '• Minos, the brilliant son of Zeus," as "holding a golden sceptre and passing judgment on the dead." In Ap. Rhod., 4. 11 76 ff., Alcinous '• held in his hand the golden sceptre of justice, whereby many a man in the town had righteous judgment given him."

^ Paus., 9. 40. II ff., Frazer.

^ Botticher, Der Baumkultiis der Hellenen, pp. 232-240.

'" This explains the vision of Clytcemnestra in Soph. El., 417 ff., Jebb : " 'Tis said that she beheld our sire (Agamemnon), restored to the sunlight, at her side once more ; then he took the sceptre — once his own, but now borne by Aegisthus — and planted it at the hearth ; and thence a fruitful bough sprang upward, wherewith the whole land of Mycenae was overshadowed.'

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