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

The Blue Nimbus 37

further details and names. In the centre a four-sided pillar with
splayed foot and moulded top bears the inscription Dios, ' (the
pillar) of Zeus1.' It rises above, and probably out of, an altar,

Fig. 9.

over which Oinomaos, faced by Pelops, is in act to pour his
libation. The king is flanked by Myrtilos, his faithless charioteer;
the claimant, by Hippodameia, whom an older woman—possibly

1 AIOS here is commonly supposed to mean ' (the altar) of Zeus.' Overbeck Gr.
Kunstmyth. Zeus p. 5 f. fig. 1 objects that in this case the word would have been written
on the blank side of the altar, and prefers to supply Aids (dya'Kfji.a or e5os). If, however,
the pillar actually rises out of the altar (as does the female herm on the Dareios-vase:
Furtwangler-Reichhold op. cit. ii. 148 pi. 88), the distinction ceases to be important; the
altar is virtually the base of the pillar.

An interesting parallel is furnished by a series of bronze weights found at Olympia—
the very spot represented on the vase {Olympia v. 801—824). They are shaped like an
altar of one, two, three, or four steps, and are regularly inscribed AIOS, sometimes AIOS
IEPiM, or with the addition of a cult-title AIOP OATMIIIft, AIOP OATNIIIfl, AIOS
KAA(\lv'lkov? Miss J. E. Harrison), AIOS KAA(5eou? cp. Paus. 5. 10. 7. H. B.
Walters in Brit. Mus. Cat. Bronzes p. 361 no. 3008, followed by E. Michon in Daremberg-
Saglio Diet. Ant. iv. 552 n. 50, suggests KXapiov). Some of them are further decorated
with a thunderbolt, or with an eagle attacking a snake. If these weights really represent
an altar and not merely—as is possible —a pile of smaller weights, that altar was pre-
sumably the great altar of Zeus, which is known to have been a stepped structure formed
from the ashes of the thighs of the victims sacrificed to Zeus (Paus. 5. 13. 8 ff.). Fig. 10
is a specimen inscribed AIOS (Brit. Mus. Cat. Bronzes p. 49 no. 327).

Copper coins of Nikaia in Bithynia, struck under Domitian, show a flaming rect-
angular altar inscribed AIOC | A TO | PA I j 0 Y (Morell. Thes. Num. Imp. Rom. ii. 483 f.