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

go The Cult of Zeus Lykaios at Kyrene

Herodotos relates that the Persian army, on its return from the
capture of Barke (512 B.C.), encamped upon the 'hill of Zeus
Lykaios' near Kyrene1. This certainly implies a Cyrenaic cult
of that deity. Moreover, Ludvig Muller pointed out that the figure
of Zeus Lykaios on the early silver coins of Arkadia (fig. 43)2 is
reproduced on a gold stater of Kyrene (fig. 58)3. Here too we
see the god enthroned towards the left with a sceptre in his right
hand, while an eagle flies directly towards him. Other specimens
of the Cyrenaic stater vary, as did the Arcadian coins, only with
more freedom, the position of the eagle, which sometimes flies
before Zeus with a snake in its talons4, sometimes rests on the

Fig. 61. Fig. 62. Fig. 63.

right hand of the god5, sometimes perches behind him on a stem
or branch curved like a lituos (figs. 59, 60)6, and sometimes is absent
altogether7. The remarkable adjunct of the eagle on a lituos-
shaped branch cannot, so far as I know, be precisely paralleled.

1 Hdt. 4. 203.

2 Cp. supra p. 68 f.

3 L. Muller Numismatique de VAncienne Afrique Copenhague i860 i. 48 no. 184
fig. 184, ib. p. 67.

4 Id. ib. i. 49 no. 188, Hunter Cat. Coins iii. 568 (cp. ib. pi. 92, 2).

5 L. Muller op. cit. i. 49 no. 190, Supplement p. 9 pi. t, 190, Bunbury Sale Catalogue
1896 ii. 95 no. 717, Montagu Sale Catalogue 1896 i. 104 no. 801 pi. 10.

6 L. Muller op. cit. i. 49 nos. 185—187 fig. 185 (my fig. 59). Fig. 60 is from a
specimen in the British Museum.

In the Montagu Sale Catalogue 1896 i. 104 no. 799 pi. 10 the eagle appears to be
seated on a rock. Cp. CHagan Sale Catalogue 1908 p. 79 no. 786 (?).

7 L. Muller op. cit. i. 49 no. 189 fig. 189.