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

198 The Solar Wheel in Greece

Euripides the poet-philosopher is represented by Aristophanes
as declaring that A ither at the creation devised—

The eye to mimic the wheel of the sun1.

Again, Aristophanes, who makes fun of everybody including himself,
in his comedy Daidalos seems to have shown the sun as a wheel
spinning in the air, and puts into the mouth of one of his characters
the illusion-destroying couplet:

Stage-carpenter, when you want to send the wheel
Spinning aloft, say, 'Hail, thou light of the sun2!'

The conception of a solar wheel is, however, seldom expressed in
extant Greek literature. For the most part it has been obscured
by progressive civilisation and lies half-hidden beneath later accre-
tions. For all that, it can be detected by patient search as the
ultimate explanation of not a few myths, ritual objects, and divine
insignia.

(a) Ixion.

I begin with the myths—and in primis that of Ixion, a personage
of paramount importance for the proper understanding of early
Greek beliefs. The orthodox tale with regard to him is told
succinctly by the scholiast on Euripides: 'Ixion was a Lapith by
race, and married Dia the daughter of Eioneus. He plotted against
his father-in-law, when he came to fetch the bridal gifts. He dug
a pit in his house, filled it with fire, and flung Eioneus into it.
Wherefore he incurred the wrath of heaven. But Zeus took pity
on Ixion and received him and let him be in his own holy place,
giving him a share of immortality too. He in his wantonness saw
Hera and was enamoured of her. She, not brooking his mad
desires, told Zeus. Whereupon Zeus was wrathful and, wishing to
learn whether the thing was true, made a cloud {iiephele) in the
likeness of Hera. Ixion on seeing it thought it to be Hera and lay
with it and begat a child of double nature, part man, part horse,
wherefrom the rest of the Kentauroi are sprung. But Zeus in anger
bound Ixion to a winged wheel and sent him spinning through the
air. Ixion under the lash repeats the words: "We must honour
our benefactors." Some say that Zeus hurled him into Tartaros.
Others, again, that the wheel was made of fire3.'

1 Aristoph. thesm. 17. In Soph. Ant. 1065 rp6xovs a/JLiWrjTTjpas i)\iov all the MSS.
have rpoxovs, 'wheels'; but Jebb rightly accepts Erfurdt's cj. rpdxovs, 'courses.'

2 Aristoph. Daedalus frag. 234 Dindorf ap. Erotian. p. 42 Klein 6 fiTjxai'OTroios, oiroTe
/3ou\ei tov Tpoxov \ eav {ekav cj. Bergk, eX/tew Cobet) aveKas, A^ye, %atpe (p£yyos rjXiov.

3 Schol. A. C. M. Eur. Phoen. 1185. The ultimate source of the scholion appears to
be Pherekydes frag. 103 {Frag. hist. Gr. i. 96 f. Miiller).