Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/404

 374 ^'^^ European Sky-god.

Zeus devolved upon the king as military leader. Possibly he owed his position at the head of the army to this very fact. If so, we may subscribe to the opinion long since put forward by Fr. Creuzer,-^ viz. : that Zeus was the source of every honour enjoyed by the king. The ancients in any case did well to personify Kingship as the daughter of Zeus.''^^

The duties of the king as representative of Zeus could be satisfactorily discharged only by a man who was perfect and without blemish, by a man — that is — in the prime of life suffering from no defect of body or mind. The kings of the heroic age were in fact conspicuous for their physical powers. Achilles, for example, is known to fame as " swift of foot," Hector as "tamer of horses," Diomedes and Mene- laus as "good at the war-cry." Moreover, it was well understood that the decay of bodily strength would involve a corresponding loss of authority. Hence the anxiety with which Achilles in the under-world asks about his father's health: "Tell me of Peleus free from blemishes (afivfiovo';), if aught thou hast heard, whether he still keepeth his

'ioTaaav fSpsrag, snppl. 647 f.. ttiDc y«P rpo-n-aia Ztjvoc Alyetag tokoc \ iffTijffev 01 re avfifiSTaaxovTeg copog ; On the cult of Zeus TpoTralog at Sparta and in Salamis see Preller-Robert, p. 140, n. 3 ; and on that of Zeus Tpo-n-aiovxoQ in Pamphylia, Farnell, CuUs, i. 164.

Kmigsrechten" quoting Aesch. Ag., 42 ff., &c.
 * Creuzer, Sytnbolik^, iii., 108, " Als Konig ist er auch Urqtielle von alien

-' Schol. Aristoph. av. 153^' Eii^povioc, on Aiug dvyaTi]p }) BarriXeia.

-* This I take to be the meaning of ajivy.iov, "blameless," an epithet used in the Homeric poems of kings who were by no means " blameless" from a moral point of view (see Ebeling, Lexicon Hoinericutn, s. v. ap.v\nx)v). If the word was originally, as I suppose, a ceremonial term applicable to the priestly king, fresh significance is given to Odysseus' speech in Od., 19. 109 ff. : " Even as a king without blemish, who ruleth god-fearing over many mighty men and maintaineth justice, while the black earth beareth wheat and barley, and the trees are laden with fruit, and the flocks bring forth without fail, and the sea yieldeth her fish by reason of his good rule, and the folk prosper beneath him." The king who is a^vfuitv has a flourishing kingdom : the king who is maimed (see the oracle cited on page 375) has a kingdom diseased like himself.