Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/446

 41 6 The European Sky-god.

Apollo seated on his omphalos"''^ is comparable with that of Zeus FeX;^^^? seated on his tree-trunk : -^" indeed, a unique Cretan coin at Glasgow"^^ actually represents Apollo seated on a stump — a striking parallel to the Zeus of Phasstus.

The brilliant discoveries of Mr. A. Evans at Cnossus have enabled us to trace the evolution of another Apolline symbol — the tripod. The Cretan Zeus, to whom Apollo approximated, had in Minoan times a group of three sacred trees, which were conventionalised into a triad of pillars.-*'* These pillars were connected by a top-piece, serving some- times as a libation-table,-^^ sometimes as a seat-like recep- tacle,^^^ sometimes as a bowl.-^'^ Mr. Evans justly remarks ~^^ that this last variety supplied the prototype of such tripods as the Oxford specimen -^^ or that dedicated to Apollo at Delphi out of the spoils taken at Plataea,'-^^" in which the divinity finds an anthropomorphic or zoomorphic expression. Plainly, therefore, the ordinary domestic tripod was a con- venient substitute for the bsetylic triad, and this is its true significance in the Apolline cult.^'^^ Apollo seated on his

-"' E.g., Overbeck Kiiiistntyth. Apollo Miinztaf. 3, 35-43.

=62 Class. Rev., xvii., 413 fig. 8.

=® G. Macdonald, Cat. of Gk. coins in the Hunterian collection, ii., pi. 43, 7.

-" fourn. of Hell. Stud., xxi., 138-143, Class. Rev., xvii., 406 ft'., fig. 3.

"-'^ fourn. of Hell. Stud., xxi., 114 fig. 7.

-^^ lb., 115 fig. 9, 116 fig. II.

"^ lb., iij fig. 14. -s« lb., 118.

^ Journ. of Hell. Stud., xvi., 275 ff., pi. I2.

'^° V. Duruy Hist. Greece, ii., 490 f. The description in Hdt., 9. 81, 6 TpiTTovQ .... 6 iTTi Tov TpiKapTjvov oipiog is inexact. The central stem of the tripod is formed by a coil of three separate snakes.

=" Miss J. Harrison has suggested to me in conversation that the famous Delphic symbol E, concerning which Plutarch wrote his whimsical tractate de el apud Delphos, was simply a sacred sign for the baetylic triad, and should therefore be written as UJ or m. The former arrangement is supported by the triad of bjetylic pillars found at Cnossus, which were conjoined at the base {Class. Rev., xvii., 407 fig. 3). The latter has the analogy of the Apolline tripod in its favour. I incline to think that this view is decidedly more probable than the explanation which I put forward in Folk-Lore, xiv., 287 f.