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

154 The Mountain as Marriage-place of Zeus

have been born. Pergamon1 certainly, and possibly Mount Ide in
the Troad2, were of the number. Among the Greek islands Naxos
had its own story of the birth of Zeus3, connected perhaps with
Mount Drios4. Kronos was said to have swallowed the stone that
Rhea gave him instead of Zeus at Chaironeia in Boiotia, on a
rocky height called Petrachos5 : Thebes too claimed to be the
birth-place of Zeus6 and could point to a place that took its name
from the event7. In Messenia local piety declared that Zeus had
been, if not born, at least brought up by the nymphs upon the
summit of Mount Ithome8. But of all the non-Cretan districts
Arkadia had established the strongest claim to be considered the
cradle of Zeus9: here on Mount Thaumasion Kronos had swal-
lowed the stone10, and here on Mount Lykaion Zeus was born11 and
reared12.

(d) The Mountain as the Marriage-place of Zeus.

The union of Zeus with Hera was likewise referred by the
Greeks to a variety of mountain-tops. The Iliad in a passage of
more than usual beauty describes how the two slept together on
a peak of the Trojan Ide :

So Kronos' son, and clasped his bride to his breast.

Beneath them Earth divine made grass to grow

New-nurtured, and the dewy lotus-bloom,

Crocus and hyacinth, thick and soft withal,

Which raised them from the ground. Thereon they lay,

And o'er them spread a cloud magnificent

And golden: glittering dew-drops from it fell.

Thus slumbered still the Sire on Gargaros' height,

Vanquished by sleep and love, his wife in his arms13.

I Append. B Mysia.

. 2 Prop. 3. 1. 27 Idaeum Simoenta Iovis cunabula parvi—if that is the right reading of
the line, and if Propertius is not guilty of confusing Mt Ide in the Troad with Mt Ide in
Crete.

3 Aglaosthenes Naxiaca frags. 1, 2 {Frag. hist. Gr. iv. 293 Miiller).

4 Infra p. 163 ff., Append. B Naxos.

5 lb. Boiotia.

6 Lyk. Al. 1194 with schol. and Tzetz. ad loc.

7 Aristodemos ap. schol. //. 13. 1, cp. Paus. 9. 18. 5.

8 Append. B Messene.

9 See e.g. Clem. Al. protr. 2. 28. i p. 20, 30 ff. Stahlin, Cic. de nat. deor. 3. 53,
Ampel. 9. 1.

10 Steph. Byz. s.v. Qav/xdaiov, Paus. 8. 36. 2 f.

II Kallim. h. Zeus 4ff., Strab. 348, Paus. 8. 36. 3. Zeus was washed at his birth in
the cold waters of the river Lousios (Paus. 8. 28. 2), and swaddled at Geraistion (et. mag.
p. 227, 44 f.).

12 Paus. 8. 38. 2 f.

13 77. 14. 346 ff., cp. Petron. sat. 127. 9.