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

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https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14695#0085

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Zeus as god of the Blue Sky 33

It is usual to suppose that in such passages Euripides was writing
as a disciple of Anaxagoras. But, though Euripides was certainly
influenced by Anaxagoras1, and though Anaxagoras in his cosmo-
gony derived the world from the reciprocal action of a rare warm
bright dry principle termed aither and a dense cold dark moist
principle termed aer*1, yet inasmuch as the philosopher nowhere
calls his aither by the name of Zeus, his influence on the poet is
not here to be traced. Nor yet can these Euripidean passages be
ascribed to Orphic teaching. For the Orphic Zeus was pantheistic
and only identified with aither in the same sense as he is identified
with all the other elements of Nature3. Thus Aischylos in his
Heliades writes probably under Orphic influence :

Zeus is the aither, Zeus the earth, and Zeus the sky,
Zeus the whole world and aught there is above it4.

Orphic poems describe aither as the 'unerring kingly ear' of Zeus5,
or as 'holding the ever tireless might of Zeus' high palace6'; but a
direct identification of Zeus with aither is attributed to Orpheus
only by Ioannes Diakonos, a late and untrustworthy author7.
What then was the source of Euripides' teaching in the matter?
Possibly Herakleitos' use of ' Aithrios Zeus' for 'the Bright Sky8';
but possibly also the old zoi'stic conception that lay at the base
of all these philosophical superstructures.

(d) Zeus as god of the Blue Sky in Hellenistic Art.

Pompeian wall-paintings have preserved to us certain Hellenistic9
types of Zeus conceived as god of the blue sky. He is characterised
as such by the simplest of means. Either he wears a blue nimbus
round his head, or he has a blue globe at his feet, or he is wrapped
about with a blue mantle.

* -

1 See P. Uecharme ' Euripide et Anaxagore' in the Rev. Et. Gr. 1889 h. 234 ff.

2 E. Zeller A History of Greek Philosophy trans. S. F. Alleyne London 1881 ii. 354 ff.

3 Orph. frag. 123, 10 ff. Abel irvp /cat iidwp /cat 7ata /cat aidrjp, vvt, re /cat rjfxap, | ...
navTa yap ev Tirjvbs fiey&Xq) rdde aw/mari. /cetrat.

4 Aisch. Heliades frag. 70 Nauck2 Zeus eVrtz> aidrjp, Zeus 8e yr), Zeus 5' ovpavos, | Zeus rot
rd iravra xwrt t£ov8' vweprepov.

5 Orph. frag. 123, 19 ff. Abel.

6 Orph. h. Aith. 5. 1 Abel. »

7 Io. Diak. in Hes. theog. 950 = Orph. frag. 161 f. Abel.

8 Supra p. 28. For the influence of Herakleitos on Euripides see A. E. Haigh The
Tragic Drama of the Greeks Oxford 1896 pp. 234, 272.

9 Overbeck Gr. Kunstmyth. Zeus p. 190.

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