Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/212

180 BOOK II.

The infancy of Zeus. The Arkadian and Cretan Zeus.

and Odyssey he appears at will in the Olympian home of Zeus, and moves as an equal among the gods who are there assembled.

The myth as related by Apollodoros has received some ampli- fications. The child Zeus in the Diktaian cave is nourished by the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida with the milk of Amaltheia, and the armed Kouretes clash their shields and spears lest the cry of the babe should reach the ear of his father Kronos. In the war with the Titans the Kyklopes give to Zeus their thunder and lightning, to Hades the helmet which in the Iliad renders the wearer invisible, and to Poseidon a trident. The struggle is followed by the casting of lots between the three Kronid brothers for the partition of the heaven above, of the earth beneath, and of the hidden regions under the earth. There was no need of any such method. The old mythical phrase rendered it impossible that any but Zeus could be the lord of the bright heaven. In other points also the account of the mythographer is at variance with that of the Hesiodic poet. According to the latter Aphrodite is the offspring of Ouranos ; the former represents her as the child of Zeus and Dione, and makes the scheme of things begin with Ouranos himself instead of Chaos.

That Zeus should be nursed by Ida is an incident for which we are at once prepared when in the Eastern myth we find that Ida is a name of the earth, and that she is assigned as a wife to Dyaus. That he should have a sanctuary specially sacred on the Lykaian heights in Arkadia was, as we have seen, as indispensable as the birth of Phoibos in Delos. But the Arkadian legend is noteworthy as showing the fantastic forms which spring up in rank luxuriance from mythical phrases when either wholly or partially misunderstood. The blue heaven is seen first in the morning against the highest mountain tops, and on these the rays of the sun rest before they light up the regions beneath ; and as it had been said that Zeus dwelt on high Olympos and that his palace was the first building which the sun ever saw, so in strict fidelity to the old phrases the Arkadians insisted that their own Lykosoura was the most ancient of all cities, and the first which Helios had ever beheld, and that Zeus had been nourished by the nymphs Thcisoa, Neda, and Hagno on the Lykaian hill hard by the temple of our Lady (Despoina). Nay, as Pausanias tells us,^ the hill was also called Olympos, and in it there was a spot named Kretea, and hence, as some would have it, here Zeus was born, and not in Crete, the island of the Egean sea. Cretans and Arkadians were doubtless alike sincere in their convictions ; but, had they remembered the meaning of the words which they used, they

' viii. 38, I.