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

The Transition from Sky to Sky-god 11

Italians in its transitional phase. Behind him is the divine Sky,
in front the Sky-god Iupiter.

Now an animate Sky, even if credited with certain personal
qualities, does not necessarily become an anthropomorphic Sky-
god. It may even develop in the opposite direction. Xenophanes
of Kolophon in the sixth century B.C. appears to have based his
reformed theology directly on the ancient Greek conception of
Zeus. As Aristotle puts it, he (looked upon the whole sky and
declared that the One exists, to wit God1.' To this cosmic Unity
'equal on all sides2' Xenophanes, again in all probability following
the lead of early religious thought, ascribed various personal
powers:

As a whole he sees, as a whole he thinks, and as a whole he hears3.

But the poet explicitly repudiates anthropomorphism:

One God there is, greatest among gods and men,
Like to mortals neither in form nor yet in thought4.

We have therefore, it would seem, still to determine the circum-
stances that occasioned the rise of the anthropomorphic view. In
plain words, we must answer the question : How came the Greeks
in general to think of Zeus, not as the blue sky, but as a sceptred
king dwelling in it ?

To solve this problem we turn our attention once more to the
primitive idea of a living Sky. One point about it, and that the
most important of all for practical folk, we have thus far omitted
to mention. Vegetable life, and therefore animal life, and therefore
human life, plainly depends upon the weather, that is upon the
condition of the Sky5. Hence unsophisticated man seeks to

1 Aristot. met. I. 5. 986 b 21 ff. Eevocp&vrjs 5e...eis top o\op ovpavbv airojSX£\pas to op
eivai (prjai top 8e6v. J. Burnet Early Greek Philosophy London and Edinburgh 1892
prefers to translate: 'Xenophanes...said, with reference to the whole universe, that the
One was God.' But this, I believe, misses the point. Xenophanes, like Pythagoras
and many another reformer, starts with a revival of half-forgotten beliefs.

2 H. Diels Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker2 Berlin 1906 i. 41,6 iravTaxbdev o/ulolop.

3 Xenophan. frag. 24 Diels ap. Sext. adv. math. 9. 144 odXos bpq., odXos de poei, odXos
M T aKotiei, Diog. Laert. 9. 19. Cp. the Homeric evpvowa Ze6s and the Hesiodic ir&PTa
idwp Alos b<pdaXp.bs /ecu irdvTa porjaas (0. d. 267).

4 Xenophan. frag. 23 Diels ap. Clem. Al. strom. 5. 14 p. 399, 146°. Stahlin, cp.
frag. 10 ff. Diels.

8 The Greeks persistently attempted to connect Zevs, THjva, etc. with £rjv. Gruppe
Gr. Myth. Rel. p. 1101 n. justly remarks that their attempts, though etymologically
mistaken, have a certain value as throwing light on their conception of the god. He
distinguishes: (1) Zeus as the only living son of Kronos {et. mag. p. 408, 55 f., cp. et. Gud.
p. 230, 16 f.); (2) Zeus as the world-soul (Cornut. theol. 2 p. 3, 3 ff. Lang, el. mag.
p. 408, 52 f.); (3) Zeus as the cause of life to all that live (Aristot. de mund. 7. 401 a 13 ff. -
Apul. de mund. 37, Chrysippos infra p. 29 n. 4, Cornut. theol. 2 p. 3, 6 Lang, Diog.