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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#0311

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238 The Solar Wheel in Greece

(7) Kirke.

Another mythological personage that travelled in the sun's
wheeled chariot was Kirke, the first mistress of magic. In the
Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus she is carried off from Kolchis by
a team of winged snakes1, and Aphrodite, personating Kirke, is
believed to have returned thither in the same equipage2. O. Gruppe
thinks that this trait was borrowed by the poet from the myth of
Medeia3; and that is certainly a possibility to be reckoned with4.
At the same time it must be remembered that Kirke was the
daughter of Helios and as such might well claim to use the solar
car. Apollonios of Rhodes had in fact described how Helios'once
took her in his own car from east to west, from Kolchis to Etruria5;
and Apollonios, according to a Greek commentator, was but follow-
ing the still earlier narrative of Hesiod6. So that, whether Valerius
Flaccus was or was not the first to mention Kirke's team of snakes,
Kirke riding in the solar chariot is a much older conception.
Conformably with it the author of the Orphic Argonautikd invests
her with a solar halo :

Straightway a maiden met them face to face,
The sister of Aietes great of soul,
Daughter of Helios—Kirke was the name
Asterope her mother and far-seen
Hyperion gave her. Swift to the ship she came,
And all men marvelled as they looked upon her;
For from her head floated the locks of hair
Like glittering sunbeams and her fair face shone,
Yea, gleamed as with a gust of flaming fire7.

In a Pompeian wall-painting Kirke's head is surrounded by a
circular blue nimbus*. But a Roman lamp and a contorniate medal

that Dagon the chief god of the Philistines is described as Zeus Arotrios in Philon Bybl.
frag. 2, 20 {Frag. hist. Gr. hi. 568 Miiller) 6 5e Aay&v, eweiS-h evpe gItov koX dporpov,
eKX-qdr] Zeus 'Aporptos, cp. id. 14 (hi. 567) Aaydbv, 6s eVn Straw with F. Cumont's note in
Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. iv. 1985 f.

1 Val. Flacc. 7. 120 ut aligeri Circen rapuere dracones.

2 Id. 7. 217 ff. o tandem, vix tandem reddita Circe | dura tuis, quae te biiugis serpen-
tibus egit | hinc fuga ?

3 Gruppe Gr. Myth. Rel. p. 544 n. 5.

4 Cp. Val. Flacc. 1. 224 aligeris secat anguibus auras (5. 453) of Medeia. For the
supposed influence of the Medeia-myth on the Kirke-myth see further K. Seeliger in
Roscher Lex. Myth. ii. 1194, 38 ff., 1202, 51 ff.

5 Ap. Rhod. 3. 309 ff.

6 Schol. Ap. Rhod. 3. 311 —Hes. frag. 195 Flach. K. Seeliger in Roscher Lex.
Myth. ii. 1200 denies it.

7 Orph. Arg. 1214—1221. In Ap. Rhod. 4. 725 ff. Kirke recognizes Medeia by her
possession of a similar halo : waaa yap 'HeXtou yevei} apL8r]\os ideadai | rfev, eVei (i\e(papwv
aTTOT7)\66i pLap/mapvyrjcrLP | olbv re xPV(r^7lv a-vribiriov teaav atyK-qv.

8 Helbig Wandgem. Camp. p. 293 no. 1329, F. Mazois Les mines de Pompei Paris
 
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