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

io8 Dionysiac traits in the cult of Zeus

basket and its contents1. Note that the dead Kabeiros is here
termed Dionysos and that a portion of him is kept in a basket
to serve as a nucleus of fresh life.

Firmicus Maternus adds that the slain brother ' consecrated
beneath the roots of Mount Olympos' was ' the Kabeiros to whom
the inhabitants of Thessalonike used to make supplication with
blood-stained mouth and blood-stained hands2.' This Kabeiros
is known to us from coins (figs. 77, yS)s as a young man with a

Fig. 77. Fig. 78. Fig. 79.

large ring or rings round his throat, who holds a species of double-
axe and a rhyton or drinking-horn. The rJiyton ends in the forepart
of a goat4—a fact which leads us to conjecture that it was a cormi
copiae, like the horn of Amaltheia5. Indeed, a horn or horns must
have been part of the ritual furniture of the cult; for some coins
show the Kabeiros with a horn apparently planted in the ground
beside him (fig. 79)fi, others with a horn erect on a base to the right
and a flaming altar to the left (fig. 80)7, others again with a pair of
horns set in bases on either hand (fig. 81)8. The double-axe, the

1 When the usurper Amphitres was besieging the sons of Leodamas at Assesos,
acpiKPOvvrai vcavicrKOL, Tottijs Kai "Ovvtjs, ck Qpvyias, iepa ^xopT€S Kafieipwv ev KiVrei
KeKaKvfifxeva, taught the people their rites and helped them to rout the besiegers : see
Nikol. Damask, frag. 54 (Frag. hist. Gr. iii. 388 f. Midler).

'2 Firm. Mat. 11.

3 Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Macedonia etc. p. 113 fig., pp. 114, 121 ff., Hunter Cat.
Coins i. 368f., 373 ff., pi. 25, 5; Roscher Lex. Myth. ii. 2534 fig. r, Daremberg-Saglio
Diet. Ant. i. 770 fig. 911 (Nero as Kabeiros).

4 T. Panofka Die griechischen Trinkhorner und ihre Verzierungen Berlin 1851 p. 1
pi. 1, 2.

5 On the horn of plenty held, not only by Amaltheia, but also by Hades, Ge, the
chthonian Hermes, the Horai, the Hesperides, the Naiades, river-gods, Eniautos, the
Agathos Daimon, Tyche, Sosipolis, etc., see K. Wernicke in Pauly-Wissowa Real-Enc.

i. 1721 ff.

15 Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Macedonia etc. p. 114 no. 54. Cp. Hunter Cat. Coins i. 375
Gordianus iii.

7 Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Macedonia etc. p. 123 Maximinus, p. 125 Gordianus iii,
p. 129 Salonina, Htinter Cat. Coins i. 374 Maximus, Ant. Miinz. Berlin Paeonia etc.

ii. 152 Maximinus fig., 154 Gordianus iii. I figure an uncatalogued specimen (Iulia
Mamaea) in the British Museum.

8 Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Macedonia etc. p. 121 Caracalla, Hunter Cat. Coins i. 373
Elagabalus, Ant. Miinz. Berlin Paeonia etc. ii. 152 f. Maximinus.