Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/429

 The European Sky-god. 399

settled by a single combat, the former being represented by an archer, the latter by a slinger.^^° " After the reign of Oxylus, who also held the games, the Olympic festival was discontinued down to the time of Iphitus. When Iphitus renewed the games . . . people had forgotten the ancient customs, and they only gradually remembered them."^^^ '■ Iphitus presided alone over the games, and after Iphitus the descendants of Oxylus did likewise."^^^ Tradition, therefore, manifestly points to the conclusion that the Olympic games originated in a contest for the post of local king.

Further, there are reasons for believing that the Olympic victor or local king at one time posed as a human Zeus. It was in Elis that Salmoneus pretended to be Zeus^^^ : Virgil ^^^ describes him as a victor [ovans) who claimed divine honours ; and a fifth-century vase now at Chicago^^^ shows him decked with olive sprays and fillets as an Olympic victor, while he brandishes a thunderbolt in his right hand, a sword in his left, apparently as an embodi- ment of Thunderbolt Zeus and Warlike Zeus, two forms of Zeus connected with Oenomaus at Olympia.^^^ Even in historical times, when " people had forgotten the ancient customs " and the victor no longer carried a thunderbolt, there are indications that he was in effect both king and Zeus. To begin with, he was crowned ; and his crown resembled that of Zeus himself,^^^ being a wreath cut from

>6^ lb., 5. 4. I f.

'" lb., 5. 8. 5.

><« lb., 5. 9- 4-

'^^ Apollod., I. 9. 7., cp. Folk-Lore, xv., 300, 312.

iw Verg. Aen., 6. 589.

^^ Class. Rev., xvii., 275 ff., fig. 5.

'83 Paus., 5. 14. 6 f. It is expressly stated (ib., 6) that Oenomaus used to sacrifice on the altar of Warlike Zeus at Olympia, " whenever he was about to engage in a chariot-race with any of the suitors of Hippodamia," i.e., whenever he offered his kingdom and his daughter to the man who should beat him in personal prowess {supra, p. 381 f.).

'" Paus., 5. II. I.