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

38

The Blue Nimbus

her mother1—leads forward by the wrist. Aphrodite and Eros
appropriately complete the group. On the wall in the background
hangs a white pilos with a sword, and to either side of it two
human heads—one that of a young man named Peldg{ony wearing
a Phrygian cap with lappets, the other that of a youth called
Periphas: these are the heads of former suitors vanquished and
slain by Oinomaos.

Fig. ro.

Other vases, which repeat the scene with variations, show a more
developed form of the pillar-Zeus. A kratcr with medallion handles
from Apulia, likewise in the British Museum (pi. iv, i)3, again
illustrates the compact of Oinomaos with Pelops before the altar
of Zeus. Here too the central figures are flanked by Myrtilos and
Hippodameia4; the former bears armour, the latter a bridal torch.

iii. pi. 21, 21, cp. ii. 502 iii. pi. 26, 26; Waddington-Babelon-Reinach Monn. gr. d'As.
Min. i. 406 pi. 67, 16). Others, struck under Trajan, have a large altar ready laid with
wood: there is a door in the front of the altar and beneath it the word A IOC {Hunter
Cat. Coins ii. 247). Others again, under Antoninus Pius, have a flaming altar inscribed
AljOC with AITAIOY in the exergue (Waddington-Babelon-Reinach op. cit. i. 407
pi. 68, 3).

Early altars were often inscribed with the name of the deity in the genitive case
(E. Reisch in Pauly-Wissowa Real-Enc. i. 1681).

1 Not Peitho, as I suggested in Class. Rev. 1903 xvii. 272 (following P. Weizsacker
in Roscher Lex. Myth. iii. 776), for she is white-haired. H. B. Walters in the Brit. A/us.
Cat. Vases iv. 165 rightly says Sterope.

2 Paus. 6. 21. 11.

3 Brit. Mus. Cat. Vases iv. 132 ff. no. F 278, Bull. Arch. Nap. 1858 vi. 145 ff.
pis. 8—10, Class. Rev. 1903 xvii. 272 fig. 2. My pi. iv, 1 and 2, are from a fresh drawing
of the vase.

4 Not Aphrodite, as S. Reinach supposes {Rip, Vases i. 495).