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

Zeus superseded by Saint Elias 165

Mount Pelion. Perhaps in the service for shepherds held once
a year in the summer we may venture to find the continuation of
a rite comparable with the procession of men clad in sheep-skins,
which once a year in the summer ascended Mount Pelion1.

Mount Zia in Naxos is sometimes called Ozia. This recalls
Ozea, the modern name of Mount Parnes, which in classical times
had more than one cult of Zeus upon it2. But the history of these
names needs further investigation.

More certainly connected with Zeus is Dia or Dia, an island off
the north coast of Crete, which has preserved its name in the forms
Dia and Standia3. Not far to the west of this island is Cape Dia,
the Dion dkron of Ptolemaios4, adjoining the now ruined town of
Dion5.

Lastly, a rock off the coast of Kephalonia is called Dias. In
view of the famous cult of Zeus on the neighbouring Mount Ainos6
the name is significant. Nowadays there is a monastery on Dias;
but it may have replaced a pagan sanctuary, and there are remains
of an ancient building on the spot7.

All told, these are but trifling relics of a .once ubiquitous
worship ; and their very paucity demands an explanation. The
recorded mountain-cults of Zeus number nearly one hundred.
What—it may fairly be asked—has become of all the rest ? The
Nereids and Charon are still familiar figures in the imagination of
the modern Greek peasant. Why has Zeus vanished from the
land, leaving scarce a trace behind him ? Fully to answer this
question would be to survey afresh the whole field of Hellenic
decadence. I must not attempt such a task even in barest outline,
but content myself with indicating a few salient features of a region
long since measured and charted by others.

Albrecht Dieterich in a brilliant essay published some years
after his death8 sought to prove that the worship of the Olympians
was shaken, if not overthrown, by the combined attack of three
great movements. The first was what he terms a revolution from
above—the rationalism of Greek philosophic thought, originating
in the higher strata of society (a Thales here, a Kritias there) and
gradually working its way downwards through the masses. The

1 Infra ch. i § 6 (f) viii. 2 Append. B Attike.

3 Pauly-Wissowa Real-Enc. v. 298. 2rcu/5ta = es rhv Aiav.

4 Ptol. 3. 17. 7.

5 JLuseb. flraep. ev. 5. 31. 2, Plin. nat. hist. 4. 59.

6 Append. B Kephallenia.

7 B. Schmidt op. cit. i. 28.

8 A. Dieterich Kleine Schriften Leipzig and Berlin 1911 pp. 449—539 ' Der Unter-
gang der antiken Religion,'