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

The Blue Mantle

59

in a purple garment with golden stars woven into it1'; and, as
triumphing general, he would be clad in the tunica palmata and
the toga picta of Iupiter2. Nero after his Greek agonistic successes
entered Rome in the triumphal car of Augustus, wearing a purple
robe and a chlamys sprinkled with golden stars3. These are but
a few out of many who in their day, as victorious kings or kingly
victors, aped the style and claimed the honours of the sky-god.
Martianus Capella in his high-flown way tells how Iupiter himself,
when assuming his robes of state, (over a garment of glittering
white drew a glassy vesture, which, dotted here and there with
starry eyes, shone with quick quivering fires4.'

In this connexion we may notice a representation of the sky,
which appears repeatedly in Roman art5, but has been traced back
to a Hellenistic source6. The half-length figure of a bearded man
is seen holding a mantle arched above his head. E. Q. Visconti7
proposed to name him ' le Ciel/ i.e. Caelus, the Latin rendering of
the Greek Ouranos; and this proposal has been universally adopted,
for the mantle-bearer, though never accompanied by an inscription,
clearly symbolises the sky. He is, as Prof, von Duhn observes, a
Zeus-like figure8. Indeed, the Roman writers from Ennius down-
wards make Caelus first the grandfather and then the father of
Iupiter9. Nay more, oriental, especially Syrian10, worshippers
identified him with Iupiter himself11. Hence his type affected that

1 Appian. Pun. 66.

2 Liv. io. 7. 10, Suet. Aug. 94, Iuv. 10. 38 f., Ael. Lamprid. Alexander Severus
40. 8, Iul. Capitol. Gordiani tres 4. 4, Vopisc. Probus 7. 7. 4 f., Serv. in Verg. eel. 10. 27.
See further Frazer Lect. Hist. Kingship p. 197 ff.

3 Suet. Ner. 25. Dion Cass. 63. 20 calls it aXovpyida xPvcr°'7raa"ro1'> which—as
J. E. B. Mayor on Iuv. 10. 38 points out—is the phrase used by Plout. v. Aem. Paul.
34 of the triumphal robe.

4 Mart. Cap. 66 dehinc vesti admodum candidae obducit amictus hyalinos, quos
stellantibus oculis interstinctos crebri vibratus ignium luminabant.

5 O. Jahn Archaologische Beitrdge Berlin 1847 P* ^5 n> 2^ anc* m tne Ber. sacks.
Gesellsch. d. Wiss. 1849 p. 63 ff., Matz-Duhn Ant. Bildw. in Rom ii. 185 no. 2711, 429 f.
no. 3315 f., 445 ff. no. 3341, iii. 4 f. no. 3449, R. von Schneider in the Arch.-ep. Mitth.
1895 xviii. 185 f.

6 H. Dressel Fiinj Goldmedaillons aus dem Funde von Abukir Berlin 1906 pp. 25—31
(extr. from the Abh. d. berl. Akad. 1906) makes it highly probable that the superb portrait
of Alexander the Great on the obverse of a gold medallion found in Egypt (ib. p. 9 f.
pi. 2, C), though executed in the third century a.d., reproduces with fidelity a cameo of
the Hellenistic age. If so, then, as Eisler op. cit. i. 65 points out, the sky-god in the
centre of Alexander's shield is our earliest monumental evidence of the type.

7 Visconti Mus. Pie-CUm. iv. 159 f.

8 Matz-Duhn op. cit. iii. 5.

9 G. Wissowa in Pauly-Wissowa Real-Enc. iii. i2 76f.

10 F. Cumont in Pauly-Wissowa Real-Enc. i. 696 f.

11 Corp. inscr. Lat. vi no. 81 = Dessau Inscr. Lat. sel. no. 3949 optvmvs • maximvs • j