Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

Zeus the Sky

3

Ambrosial, on his immortal head
Shook—at their shaking all Olympos quaked1.

Nevertheless, although Zeus as conceived by the Homeric minstrel
is fully anthropomorphic, certain traces of the earlier conception
persisted even into post-Homeric times2. The evidence is linguistic
rather than literary. I shall begin by passing it in review.

Closely akin to the substantive Zeus is the adjective dios, which
denotes properly 'of or 'belonging to Zeus3.' This meaning it
actually bears in Attic drama4. But how comes it that in the
much earlier Homeric poems it has the force of ' bright' or
' glorious' without any such restriction to the property of a
personal Zeus5? Probably because the word was formed before
Zeus became a personality, when as yet he was the Zeus, the
radiant sky credited with an impersonal life of its own. Dtos in
fact meant at first 'of or 'belonging to the bright sky'; and a
vestige of its primary meaning is to be found in the frequent
Homeric phrases 'the bright upper air6' and 'the bright dawn7.'
The transition from brightness in this sense to glory or splendour
in general is not hard to follow. Further, when Zeus came to be
regarded as an individual sky-god, the way was open for dios,
1 of the bright sky,' to take on the more personal meaning, ' of the

enough remains to prove that the beard, like the body, was red-brown in colour shaded
with black ('E0. 'ApX. 1888 p. 77 ff. pi. 5).

1 //. 1. 528 ff., cp. 8. 199 (of Hera). For a similar explanation of earthquakes in
modern Greece see infra ch. ii. § 5.

2 Wissowa Rel. Kult. Rom. p. 100 contrasts Zeus the personal sky-god with Iupiter
the actual sky (cp. W. Warde Fowler The Religious Experience of the Roman People
London 1911 pp. 128, 141). But the contrast was neither originally nor finally
valid : at the first both Zeus and Iupiter were the sky; at the last both were the
sky-god.

3 Brugmann Grundriss etc.2 ii. 1. 187 ('himmlisch'), id. Kurze vergl. Gram. etc.
pp.99 ('himmlisch'), 360 ('gottlich'), L. Meyer ffandb. d. gr. Etym. iii. 175 f. ('von
Zeus herriihrend, Zeus angehorend,' dann allgemeiner 'himmlisch, gottlich, herrlich'
oder ahnlich), Prellwitz Etym. Wbrterb. d. Gr. Spr.2 p. 117 ('gottlich'), Boisacq
Diet. etym. de la Langue Gr. p. 189 f. ('divin'), treat dtos as *5t/tos from At/*-,
'Zeus.'

4 E.g. Aisch. P. v. 619 (3ov\ev/ia fxep to Acov, 'Hcpaiarov de xeiP> Eur. Ion 1144
av&Orj/jLa ALov TraiSos.

5 According to H. Ebeling Lexicon Hamericum Lipsiae 1885 i. 310 f. Homer has
Stos in the sense 'bright' or 'glorious' of goddesses (but not gods, though in frag. h.
Dion. 2 Slop yeuos is Dionysos son of Zeus, and in //. 17. 582 Zenodotos wrote dios"Aprjs),
nymphs, men and women, peoples and places, divine horses, rivers and mountain-peaks,
land and sea.

6 //. 16. 365, h. Dem. 70 aidepos e/c dlrjs, Od. 19. 540 es aidepa 8?av, cp. Emped. frag.
109, 2 Diels aidepa b?ov, Aisch. P. v. 88 w dtos aidrjp, Orph. frag. 53, 1 Abel aide-pi. 8icf,
167, 1 aidipa 8ioi>.

7 //. 24. 417 -qths ore 81a (pav-qri, ib. 9. 240, 662, II. 723, 18. 255, Od. 9. 151, 306, 436,
375> 12. 7, 16. 368, 19. 50, 342 7)u Slap.

I-2