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

The Precinct of Zeus Lykaios 87

Kourouniotes reminds us that, according to tradition1, Euandros,
son of Hermes, led a colony from Pallantion in Arkadia into Italy,
where he built a town Pallantion on the Palatine, and introduced
the cult of Pan Lykaios and the festival of the Lykaia, later known
as £he Lupercalia. This tradition points to an early connexion
between Arkadia and Italy ; and it is open to us to believe that
the use of the lituos came to the latter from the former. But what
exactly was the lituos ? In shape it differs but little from that
of the ordinary crooked stick carried by old-fashioned Greeks2.
Monsieur H. Thedenat, after a review of the evidence, concludes—
on the strength of a note by Servius3—that the augur's lituos may
have been a royal sceptre4. This conclusion is borne out by the
Hittite rock-carvings of Boghaz-Keui(c. 1271 B.C.), where the priestly
king carries a large reversed litttos5. I would venture one step
further and suggest that the lituos is ultimately the conventionalised
branch of a sacred tree6. If Zeus Lykaios bears a lituos, it is
because his sceptre, so to speak, was an oak-branch. His priest—
we have seen—took an oak-branch in hand, when he acted as rain-
maker on Mount Lykaion7. But, whether the lituos represents
an original branch or not, it certainly serves as a quasi-sceptre.
For this statuette (c. 550—500 B.C.) can hardly be dissociated from
the fifth-century coinage of Arkadia, which—we have said8—shows
Zeus Lykaios seated on a throne with a sceptre in his hand. In
all probability both the statuette and the coins represent the cult
image of the god9.

1 Pauly-Wissowa Real-Enc. vi. 839 fF.

2 E. Saglio in Daremberg-Saglio Diet. Ant. i. 639 ff. A black-figured amphora shows
Zeus enthroned with a crooked stick as sceptre (Mus. Eir. Gregor. ii pi. 48, 2, 2 b).

3 Serv. in Verg. Aen. 7. 187 iifuum, id est regium baculum, in quo potestas esset
dirimendarum litium.

4 H. Thedenat in Daremberg-Saglio Diet. Ant. iii. 1277 f. L. Siret in VAnthropologic
1910 xxi. 303 would connect it with neolithic axe-handles: he sees in its form and theirs
the arm of a cuttle-fish !

5 J. Garstang The Land of the Hittites London 1910 pp. 217, 229 pis. 68, Ji.

6 Walde Lat. etym. Wdrterb. p. 345 derives lituus, Gothic li\us, Old High German
lidy 'limb,' from a root * lei-t-, 'to crook or bend,' which with another determinative
gives the Old Icelandic limr, 'limb,' Urn, 'branch,' and the Anglo-Saxon lim, 'limb,
branch.'

On the royal sceptre as a conventionalised tree see Folk-Lore 1904 xv. 370 ff.

7 Sitpra p. 65; infra ch. ii § 9 (a) iii.

8 Supra p. 68. Specimens were found by Kourouniotes on Mt Lykaion.

9 The lituos is not elsewhere known as an attribute of Zeus. A bronze statuette found
at Olympia shows him holding in his left hand a broken object, which ends below in a
stud or knob. This Furtwiingler Olympia iv. 17 pi. 7, 40, 40 a took to be the handle of
a sword: Kourouniotes would restore it as a lituos (so also Sta'is Marbres et Bronzes:
Atkenes2 p. 289^ no. 6163).