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

The Mountain as the Throne of Zeus

arranged in typical attitudes and furnished with conventional attri-
butes. Higher still, and on a larger scale than the Muses, is their
mother Mnemosyne1. All these lead upwards to Zeus himself
(fig. 98), who is seated or reclining on the mountain-top with a
himdtion wrapped about his legs, a sceptre in his right hand, and
an eagle at his feet.

The significance of the whole design is tolerably clear. The
ideal poet, inspired by Apollon and the Muses, ultimately derives
his message from their omnipotent sire; he delivers to mankind
the oracles of Zeus. Nay more, in a sense he is Zeus. Enthroned
as a divine king on earth he is a human counterpart of the divine
king enthroned in heaven2, heaven being located on the summit of

Fig. 98.

the mountain. Nor was this a mere fancy-flight of Hellenistic
imagination. It was, as we shall see in due course, a religious
conviction inseparably bound up with immemorial Hellenic customs.

But the relief before us has a special as well as a general signi-
ficance. C. Watzinger, who follows W. Amelung in ascribing the
types of Apollon and the Muses to Philiskos of Rhodes3, and
further attempts to explain the reclining Zeus as a Rhodian
development of an originally Dionysiac motif41, suggests the fol-
lowing possibilities. Apollonios Rhodios, or some other epic poet

This identification, first proposed by G. Cuper in 1683, is now commonly accepted.

C Watzinger op. cit. p. 17 justly says: ' In zeusahnlicher Haltung sitzt Homer,' and
ib. p. 20 calls attention to the actual cult of Homer established at Alexandreia by
Ptolemy iv Philopator (Ail. var. hist. 13. 22) and existing also at Smyrna (Strab. 646).

3 C. Watzinger op. cit. p. 4 ff.

4 Id. ib. p. i4ff.

9—2