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

The Blue Mantle

57

with black ground from the Casa dei bronzi shows him clad in a
sky-blue wrap and sitting on a seat which is draped in reddish
brown1. An important painting of the hierbs gdmos from the
Casa del poeta tragico represents Zeus seated on a rock with a
light violet robe hanging like a veil over his hair and thrown
loosely round his shoulders, back, and legs2. Again, a picture of
Zeus drawing lots has him enthroned with a peacock-blue himdtion
about his knees3. The splendid wall-painting of a youthful
fair-haired Zeus found in the Casa dei Vettii similarly shows
the god with a peacock-blue himdtion round his legs4. Other
Pompeian examples portray him seated, his legs wrapped in
a red mantle with a blue5 or green6 border. A painting from
Herculaneum gives him a whitish nimbus and drapes him from the
waist down wards in a reddish himdtion; but it is to be observed
that here Zeus is represented as reclining among the clouds with
a rainbow arched above him and a background of blue sky7.
Finally, in a fresco of the Hadrianic age, found at Eleusis, he is
once more seen on a throne, his legs swathed in a violet-blue
himdtion edged with green8.

It would seem, then, that Hellenistic art normally depicted
Zeus as wearing a mantle of violet-blue. And this in all probability
corresponded with cult-practice. Alexander the Great is known
to have worn a purple cloak, when he masqueraded as Zeus
Ammon9. Anaxenor, a famous musician of Magnesia on the
Maiandros in the days of M. Antonius the triumvir, was clad in
purple by his fellow-countrymen as priest of Zeus Soszpolis10. And

1 So Zahn Die schdnsten Ornamente etc. ii pi. 54 (coloured). According to Helbig
Wandgemiilde etc. p. ^1 no. 103, his garment is reddish and his seat covered with a
blue robe.

2 Helbig op. cit. p. 33 f. no. 114, infra ch. iii § 1 (a) iii.

3 Sogliano op. cit. p. 19 f. no. 73, Arch. Zeit. 1868 xxvi. 35 pi. 4.

4 So A. Sogliano in the Mon. d. Line. 1898 viii. 2631". fig. 11 ('le gambe coperte di
mantello paonazzo'). A. Mau in the Rom. Mitth. 1896 xi. 23 had stated that the robe
was red with a blue border ('in veste rossa con margine turchino'). A fine, though
uncoloured, photographic reproduction is given by Herrmann Denkm. d. Malereipl. 46, 2.
See further J. Six in the Jahrb. d. kais. dezttsch. arch. Inst. 1910 xxv. 155.

5 Sogliano op. cit. p. 21 no. 75.

6 Id. id. p. 20 no. 74.

7 Helbig op. cit. p. 32 f. no. 113, H. Roux-M. L. Barre Herculanum et Pompii Paris
1870 ii. 184 f. pi. 54, Guida del Mus. Napoli p. 289 no. 1259.

8 'E0. 'Apx- 1888 pi. 5, supra p. 2 n. 2, Collignon Hist, de la Sculpt, gr. i. 528 says:
'le bas du corps couvert d'un himation bleu.'

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£<pbpei ev tois SeLirvoLS, ore [xev ttjv tov " Afifiwvos iropcpvpida /cat irepLUXL^eh /cat k^para
Kaddirep 6 Beds, ore de k.t.X.

10 Strab. 648, infra p. 58 n. 6.