Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/449

 The European Sky-god. 419

case of Zeus at Olympia, Lepreum, Sardes, and Cnossus.^^^ The same transition occurs in connection with Apollo him- self. We have seen him as an oak-god. It remains to see him as a poplar-god. A Roman coin of Alexandria Troas shows Apollo 'Ef^tvdev'i standing before a poplar-tree with a tripod in front of him.^®'^ Another coin of Apollonia in Illyria, struck by Caracalla, represents the statue of Apollo inside his temple, behind which appear the tops of three poplar-trees.-^^ The local cult was primitive in character ; for autonomous coins of the town figure an aniconic Apollo- column crowned and filleted. ~^^ I would suggest, therefore, that the three poplars visible on the coin of Caracalla are a triad of sacred trees, in which the deity was thought to reside. -^'^ Apollo himself was probably represented by a priestly king with an annual tenure. For Herodotus ~^^ states that the cattle of the sun-god were kept there by the richest and noblest of the citizens, who mounted guard over them, each man for a year in turn. So sacrosanct was the man in charge that, when the citizens blinded one Evenius for neglect of his duties, their flocks and fields became barren, and oracles from Dodona and Delphi bade them make ample restitution to the injured man. This Evenius and his son Deiphonus had the gift of prophecy. The Apolloniates regarded Apollo as the founder of their town : ^^^ when, therefore, Nero on coins of Apollonia describes him-

^^* Folk-Lo'i-e, XV., 297 f.

-*' Overbeck Kunstmyth. Apollo Miinztaf. 5, 32, from a specimen in Imhoof's collection. The oak too perhaps figured in the local myths of Alexandria Troas : for a coin struck there under Commodus represents a herdsman with chlamys and pedum and a horse beneath a clearly-defined oak- tree {Brit. Mils. Cat. Gk. Coins, Troas, p. 17, pi. 5, 7).

268 Overbeck Kunstmyth. Apollo Miinztaf. 4, 36, from a specimen in Imhoof s collection.

^ Overbeck ib. Miinztaf. i, 4-8.

^'' Supra, p. 416, n. 264.

23' Hdt., 9. 93 f.

^- Paus., 5. 22. 3.

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