Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/407

 The European Sky-god. 2>77

Phlegyae, who plundered them and held them to ransom. Wayfarers in the prime of life he challenged to an athletic contest, wrestling or running or the pancratium or quoit- throwing ; and, having vanquished them, he cut off their heads and hung them on his oak, where they swung dripping in the vv^ind — a ghastly sight. When he prided himself on the result of these Olympic sports {Tal<i 'OXvfjbirLdat TavraL<i), Apollo took upon him the form of a youthful boxer and smote the ogre to the ground, while a thunderbolt from the sky blasted his oak. The place where it stood was called the Oak-Heads (Apuo? KecpaXal). From Hero- dotus''*'^ and Thucydides "^^ we gather that it was a pass of Mt. Cithaeron on the way from Athens to Plataea, and that the Boeotians named it the Three Heads (Tpei? Ke^akal). The same story was told by the cyclic poets, who laid stress on the pride of Phorbas : " By reason of his overweening conceit he was minded to pose as the peer of the gods themselves ; wherefore Apollo drew near and, standing up to him, slew him."^"

There can, I think, be little doubt that Phorbas was a king who personated an oak-god ^^ and, in accordance with the primitive rule, defended his title against all comers. A somewhat similar figure is Cycnus, son of Ares, who established himself in Thessaly and waylaid travellers on the road from Tempo to Thermopylae, With their skulls he was building a temple to Apollo, when Heracles, whom he challenged to a single combat, shot him.** He was

« Hdt., 9. 39.

"" Thuc, 3. 24.

^- Schol. //., 23. 660.

Horn., 3. 211), he was the son of Triopas {ib., Paus., 7. 26. 12, Hyg. poet astr., 2. 14) and therefore a representative of the three-eyed Pelasgian Zeus {Folk- Lore, XV., 288 f.).
 * ^ If this Phorbas is to be identified with Phorbas the rival of Apollo {hymn.

alib.
 * ^ Schol. Pind. 01., 2. 147, 10. 19, Eur. Har. fur., 389 ff., Paus. i. 27. 6,