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

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https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14695#0221

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The Mountain as Marriage-place of Zeus 155

Others named Mount Oche in Euboia, Mount Kithairon in Boiotia,
Mount Kokkygion in Argolis, as the scene where Zeus took Hera
for his bride1. It was said too that Zeus met Semele on Mount
Sipylos2, that he consorted with Leto in a shady nook and natural
bower on Mount Kithairon3, that he seduced Kallisto in the neigh-
bourhood of Mount Lykaion4, that he carried off Europe to his
cave in Mount Dikte5. He formed liaisons, moreover, with more
than one mountain-goddess or mountain-nymph. Mount Agdos,
a rocky summit of Galatia, bore to him a bisexual child Agdistis,
about whom one of the wildest and most archaic of all Greek
tales was told6. According to the Orphic cosmogony, the original
rulers of ' snowy Olympos' were Ophion and the Oceanid Eury-
nome : the former gave place to Kronos, the latter to Rhea, who
in their turn were eclipsed by Zeus7. But Eurynome became by
Zeus the mother of the Charites8 and of Asopos the river-god9.
Again, the ancient systematisers of mythology, who recognised
five different Athenas, distinguished one as the daughter of Zeus
and Koryphe, adding that this, the fourth, Athena was identical
with the inventress of four-horse chariots, whom the Arcadians
called Koria10. Pausanias speaks of the Arcadian temple of Athena
Koria as standing on the koryphe ox 'peak' of a mountain11. It
is, therefore, practically certain that in Arkadia Zeus was paired
with a mountain-goddess or mountain-nymph named Koryphe.
Another of his amours was with Taygete, Atlas' daughter1'2, of
whom was born Lakedaimon, the eponym of the Lacedaemonians13.
But Taygete was herself the eponym of Mount Taygeton14, the fine
range which stretches some seventy miles from Belbina to Tainaron
and culminates in Mount Taleton (7902 feet) above Sparta (pi. xiv).
Colonel Mure says of this majestic mountain-mass: 'Whether from

1 Append. B Euboia, Boiotia, Argolis.

2 lb. Lydia.

3 Euseb. praep. ev. 3. r. 3.

4 Pseudo-Eratosth. catast. 1. 8, schol. Arat. phaen. 91.

5 Append. B Crete.
0 lb. Galatia.

7 Ap. Rhod. 1. 503 ff., Tzetz. in Lyk. Al. 1191 ff., schol. Aristoph. nub. 247.

8 Hes. theog. 907, Paus. 9. 35. 5, Orph. h. Char. 60. 1 ff.

9 Apollod. 3. 12. 6.

10 Cic. de nat. deor. 3. 59; cp. Clem. Al.protr. 2. 28. 2 p. 21, 1 f. Stahlin, who states
that the fourth Athena was the daughter of Zeus and derived her Messenian title of
Kopu0acn'a from her mother.

11 Paus. 8. 2r. 4.

12 Schol. Pind. 01. 3. 53.

13 Hellanikos frag. 56 (Frag. hist. Gr. i. 52 Muller) ap. schol. 77. 18. 486, Apollod. 3.
10. 3, pseudo-Eratosth. catast. 23, Paus. 3. 1. 2, Hyg. fab. 155, Myth. Vat. 1. 234.

14 Paus. 3. 1. 2.
 
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