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

66 Wolf-god or Light-god ?

On the very top of Mount Lykaion was a mound of earth, known
as the altar of Zeus Lykaios, from which the greater part of the
Peloponnese was visible : before the altar stood two columns bearing-
gilded eagles and ' facing the sun-rise1.' Finally, Pausanias says :
( Of the wonderful things to be seen on Mount Lykaion the most
wonderful is this. There is a precinct of Zeus Lykaios on the
mountain, and no man is allowed to enter it. Should any one
disregard the rule and enter, he cannot possibly live longer than
a year. It was said too that within the precinct all things, both
beasts and men, alike cast no shadow. Consequently, when a beast
takes refuge in the precinct, the hunter will not break in along
with it, but waits outside and looking at the beast sees no shadow
cast by it. Now at Syene on the frontier of Aithiopia, so long as
the sun is in the sign of Cancer, shadows are cast neither by trees
nor by animals ; but in the precinct on Mount Lykaion there is
the same lack of shadows at all times and seasons2.' This marvel,
which is attested by other grave and respectable authors3, though
sceptics were not wanting4, probably hangs together with the Py-
thagorean belief that ' the souls of the dead cast no shadow and
do not wink5.' The shadowless creature would on this showing
be the man or beast already devoted to death. Dr Frazer, com-
menting on the passage quoted above from Pausanias, writes:
' Untutored people often regard the shadow as a vital part of a
man and its loss as fatal. This belief is still current in Greece.
It is thought that to give stability to a new building the life of
an animal or a man is necessary. Hence an animal is killed and
its blood allowed to flow on the foundation stone, or the builder
secretly measures a man's shadow and buries the measure under
the foundation stone, or the foundation stone is laid upon a man's
shadow. It is supposed that the man will die within a year—
obviously because.his shadow is believed-to be buried under the

1 Paus. 8. 38. 7, cp. Pind. 01. 13. 152 ff. with schol. ad loc. and ad Nem. 10. 87, Polyb.
4. 33. 2^ and infra p. 83 f. L.-F. A. Maury Religions de la Grece i. 59, following
K. O. Muller Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie Gottingen 1825 p. 290 f.
and W. Baumlein in the Zeitschrift fur die Alterthtimswissenschaft 1839 vi. 1193, in-
ferred that Zeus Au/ccuos was a solar god. But K. Schwenck in the Rhein. Mas. 1839
vi. 541 f. already urged that he was a light-god rather than a sun-god.

2 Paus. 8. 38. 6.

3 Theopompos ap. Polyb. 16. 12. 7 quoted below, schol. Kallim. Zeus 13 irav ffiov
eicrLov €k€i (sr. to the birth-place of Zeus on the mountain in Parrhasia) fiefxoXva/xevop
ayovov eyLyvero /ecu ctklclu to aw/xa atirov ovk£ti iiroiei.

4 Polyb. 16. 12. 7, Plout. quaestt. Gr. 39.

5 Plout. id. On shadowless ghosts see J. von Negelein in the Archiv f. Rel. 1902
v. 18 ff.