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

Triptolemos

with its -pt-y not -p-, that his worship came to Eleusis along with
improved methods of cultivation from the fertile plains of northern
Greece1.

If such be the name and nature of Triptolemos, what are we to
make of his wheeled seat ? I believe it to have been simply an
early expression to denote the sun. Just as Herakles, when he
crossed the sea, voyaged in the solar cup lent him by Okeanos or
Nereus or Helios himself2, so Triptolemos, when he crosses the
earth, travels on the solar wheel received at the hand of Demeter.
It will be observed that this explanation of the myth squares well
with its progressive representation. The earliest vase-paintings
showed Triptolemos sitting on a one-wheeled seat. This we
naturally took to be a two-wheeled seat seen in profile3. But I now
suggest that it arose from a yet earlier religious conception, that of
the hero sitting on the single solar wheel. A possible survival
of this conception occurs in the Astronomica of Hyginus, where we
read that Triptolemos 'is said to have been the first of all to use a
single wheel, that so he might avoid delay on his journey4.' It is
noteworthy, too, that in the Argive tradition5 the father of Tripto-
lemos was Trochilos, £he of the Wheel' (trochds), the inventor—

HiKipct) rod iraKaioT&Tov tQv (rrropcov viro/xvrj/xa' deurepov iv rrj'Fapia' rpLrov virb ttoKlv tov
KaXoijfxevov Bov^vjlop. totutwv de tt&vtcov iepdoraTos eariv 6 yafxrj\t.os airbpos Kal dporos €7rl
waidcov reKVihaei with the remarks of O. Kern in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. ii. 1215 ff.
s.v. "Aporoi iepoL.

1 P. Giles in the Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society iqo8 p. 16.

2 Gruppe Gr. Myth. Pel. p. 468 n. 6. 3 Supra p. 213.

4 Hyg. poet. astr. 2. 14 qui primus omnium una rota dicitur usus, ne cursu moraretur.
J. Dechelette Manuel d' archeologie Paris 1910 ii. 1. 416 n. 3 calls attention to a

passage in the Rig-veda i. 164, 2, which describes the solar chariot ' of the single wheel'
drawn by ' the single horse ' of seven-fold name.

This raises a suspicion that more than one mythical charioteer, who lost a wheel and
thereby came to grief, was originally a solar hero. Myrtilos, the charioteer of Oinomaos,
who compassed his master's death by inserting a linch-pin of wax, or by not inserting a
linch-pin at all, and was subsequently thrown out of Pelops' car into the sea near
Geraistos, is a figure comparable with Phaethon; indeed, according to one version he
was the son of the Danaid Phaethousa (schol. Ap. Rhod. 1. 752, schol. Eur. Or. 998) : on
Apulian vases he often has as his attribute a wheel (Reinach Rep. Vases i. 128, 3, 140, 2,
290) or a couple of wheels (id. i. 167, Heydemann Vasensamml. Neapel p. 524 f. no. 3227).
In a parallel myth (Class. Rev. 1903 xvii. 2 7of.) from Thrace Dryas, like Oinomaos, is
killed through the removal of his linch-pins (Parthen. narr. am. 6, cp. Konon narr. 10).

K. Tumpel in Roscher Lex. Myth. ii. 3318, 3320, Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. ii. 2261
has drawn up a list of handsome young charioteers, who came to an untimely end. He
regard's them all as various forms of the solar hero common to the coast-districts of the
eastern Aegean. They include the following names—Apsyrtos, Atymnos, Killas, Malaos,
Myrtilos, Phaethon, Tenages. To these we may add Sphairos, a suggestive name given
by the Troezenians to Killas (Paus. 5. 10. 7), and the great Troezenian hero Hippolytos
himself, not to mention his alter ego Virbius.

5 Supra p. 212.