Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/430

 400 The European Sky-god.

the sacred olive, which grew behind the temple of Zeus^^^ : it had to be severed with a golden sickle by a boy, both of whose parents were alive.^®^ Again, he was pelted with leaves,^'^" perhaps as a representative of the tree-god. He was also adorned with prophylactic fillets and wore a peculiar helmet of honour surmounted by a high spike, &c.^''^ Not only was he feasted " within the Prytaneum, opposite the chamber in which is the hearth,"^"- as though he were the king in his palace ; but on his return home he was clad in a mantle which is compared to the royal purple,^"'^ and drawn by white horses^"^ into the city through a breach in its wall.^'^ Horace^'*' in a well-known passage says :

There are who joy them in the Olympic strife And love the dust they gather in the course ; The goal by hot wheels shunn'd, the famous prize, Exalt them to the gods that rule mankind.

Lucian^"'^ speaks in similar terms of the victor as " deemed equal to the gods" {icroOeov vo/jLi^ofieiov). And that this was no empty figure of speech is proved by the numerous examples of Olympic victors, who were not merely heroi- fied, but actually deified and worshipped as gods by their

'«« Id., 5. 15. 3.

'® Schol. vet. Find. 0/., 3. 60.

"» IS. OL, 8. loi, El mag., 532, 46, alib.

"' See the vase-paintings reproduced in Class. Rev., xvii., 274 f., figs. 3 and 4.

'" Paus., 5. 15. 12.

'" Schol. Aristoph. nub., 70.

■'* Diod., 13. 82. Dr. Frazer has suggested to me that the victor, not merely as drawn by white horses, but also as racing in his four-horse car, may have represented the sun-god (Roscher, Lex., i. 2005 ff.) ; and there is much to be said in favour of the suggestion — cp. e.g. Virgil's description of Salmoneus : quattuor hie invectus equis et lampada quassans | per Graium populos mediaeque per Elidis urbem | ibat ovans divumquesibi poscebat honorem {Acn. 6. 587 ff. ).

'"^ Plut. symp., 2. 5. Dio 63. 20, Suet. Nero, 25.

'"^ Hor. od. I. I. 3 ff.jConington.

'"^ Luc. Anach., 10.