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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#0279

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2io The Solar Wheel in Greece

mode of torture, which can be traced back to the fifth1 and even
to the sixth century B.C.2, is often mentioned by Hellenic and
Hellenistic writers. Aristophanes, for example, in his Peace makes
the chorus curse any man that seeks war for his personal profit:

May he be stretched and flogged upon the wheel3.

Similarly in the romance of Achilleus Tatios the ill-starred
Leukippe, brought to bay by her tyrannical master, defies him in
the following terms: 'Order up your tortures. Bid him bring a
wheel. Here are my hands; let him stretch them out. Bid him
bring whips too. Here is my back; let him lay on. Bid him fetch
fire. Here is my body, ready to be burnt. Bid him bring a sword
as well. Here is my throat; let him cut it! Behold a novel sight—
a single woman pitted against your whole array of tortures and
triumphant over all4!' Later, her lover Kleitophon finds himself
in an equally sensational plight: 'I, as a condemned criminal,
was to be tortured that they might discover whether Melitte had
been privy to the murder. Already I was bound, stripped of my
clothing, and hoisted up by nooses. Some were fetching whips,
others fire and a wheel. Kleinias with a groan was calling upon
the gods, when lo, the priest of Artemis, wreathed with bay, was
seen approaching.' Etc.5 The verb commonly used of this torture,
trochizein, 'to punish on the wheel,' is employed by the epigram-
matist Asklepiades in an allusion to Ixion6; and the emperor
Elagabalos, who bound parasites to a water-wheel, spoke of them
as Txions of the stream7.' Torture by the wheel, regarded by the
Romans as a specially Greek institution8, is well known in connexion
with Christian martyrdoms and mediaeval punishments. The final
relic of it—the 'Catharine wheel' of our November fireworks—by a
curious reversion, or rather by an interesting survival, still brings
before us, if we have eyes to see it, the blazing wheel of Ixion.

But, while fully admitting Prof. Lafaye's contention that the

1 Antiph. or. i. 20.

2 Anakreon frag. 21, 9 Bergk4 ap. Athen. 534 a.

3 Aristoph. pax 452.

4 Ach. Tat. 6. 20.

5 Id. 7. 12, cp. Chariton de Chaerea et Callirrhoe 3. 4, 3. 9.
e Anth. Pal. 5. 180. 3 f. ov rpox^l tls | tov Aairidrjp;

7 Ael. Lamprid. Heliog. 24. 5 Ixiones amnicos (so Hirschfeld for mss. Ixionios
amicos).

8 Apul. met. 3. 9 nec mora cum ritu Graeciensi ignis et rota, turn omne flagrorum
genus inferuntur, 10. 10 nec rota vel eculeus more Graecorum tormentis eius apparata
iairi deerant sed offirmatus mira praesumptione nullis verberibus ac ne ipso quidem
succumbit igni. Plaut. cist. 206 ff. is probably based on a Greek original. And in Cic.
'Fuse. 5. 9. 24 rot am is glossed by the word Graecos.
 
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