Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/416

386 offered sacrifices and built temples to him, and called him Zeus and  and. Indignant at this, Zeus wished to consume his whole house with a thunderbolt. But when Apollo, whom Periphas used to honour exceedingly, begged Zeus not to destroy him utterly, Zeus granted the request. He came into the home of Periphas and found him embracing his wife. Grasping them both in his hands, he turned Periphas into an eagle ; his wife, who begged him to make her too a bird to bear Periphas company, into a vulture. So upon Periphas he bestowed honours in return for his holy life among men, making him king over all the birds, and granting him to guard the sacred sceptre, and to draw near to his own throne; while Periphas' wife he turned into a vulture, and suffered to appear as a good omen to men in all their doings." In short, it appears that terrestrial Zeuses were either killed or, more often, metamorphosed into birds by the celestial Zeus. Is not this a trace of the primitive belief that the life of the divine king was forfeit to the god whom he represented?

The full meaning of these transformations into birds cannot here be investigated. But I would suggest that