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

Zeus Lykaios on a Spartan Kylix

found1. But the bird behind the throne is, as J. Boehlau remarked2,
merely put in to fill up the blank space and cannot pass muster as
the eagle of Zeus. Moreover the vase is not to be dissociated from
two others of the same sort. One of these, a kylix in the Munich
collection, again depicts a male figure on a lion-legged throne,
conversing with similar gestures. His interlocutor is a female
figure, conceived on a smaller scale
and enthroned over against him.
The supports of the larger throne
are in the shapes of a tree and an
animal—species difficult to deter-
mine (fig. 67)3. The second vase, a
fragmentary kylix in the British
Museum, once more shows a man
on a lion-footed throne. Before him
stands a woman, who raises her left
hand with a gesture of reverence
and in her right hand presents a
pomegranate (fig. 68)4. This last
vase fortunately enables us to fix the
character of the other two ; for its
resemblance to the contemporary
funereal reliefs of Lakonike5 is quite
unmistakeable. Indeed, further in-
spection reveals numerous points of
contact between all three vases and
the reliefs in question. I conclude,
therefore, that what the reliefs were Flg' 68,

in sculpture the vases were in ceramic art—a memorial of the
divinised dead. This satisfactorily accounts for the enthronement

1 Supra p. 83.

2 Jahrb. etc. loc. cit.

3 Jahn Vasensamml. Miinchen p. 229 f. no. 737, Arch. Zeit. 1881 xxxix pi. 13, 5,
F. Studniczka op. cit. p. 8 fig. 3.

This vase is commonly thought to represent a genre scene—a man talking with a
woman. But on ' Cyrenaic' ware religious or mythological types predominate (H. B.
Walters History of Ancient Pottery London 1905 i. 341), and we may fairly suspect a
deeper meaning. Studniczka op. cit. p. 23 suggests Apollon with the Hesperid Kyrene.

The animal supporting the throne has been variously interpreted as a hare (O. Jahn
loc. cit.) or a dog (A. Dumont—E. Pottier Les ceramiques de la Grece propre Paris 1884

i. 302, Reinach Rep. Vases i. 434).

4 Brit. Mus. Cat. Vases ii. 5 r no. B 6 (Apollon ? and Kyrene), Studniczka op. cit.
p. 23 fig. 18 (Apollon or Aristaios? or Battos ? ? and Kyrene) and in Roscher Lex. Myth.

ii. 1729 (Battos and Kyrene).

5 The best collection of facts concerning these reliefs is that given by M. N. Tod and
A. J. B. Wace A Catalogue of the Sparta Museimi Oxford 1906 p. 102 ff.