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

The Midsummer Wheel 285

Greenwood' {nemos), became a goddess of vengeance simply
through an illogical but almost inevitable confusion with the
abstract substantive nemesis meaning ' righteous wrath.' Nemesis
and nemesis, so far as etymology is concerned, were doubtless
sprung from the same parent stem, but in point of usage they
belonged to widely divergent branches of it. In the apple-bough
held by Nemesis at Rhamnous, perhaps too in the plane-tree
before the sanctuary of the Nemeseis at Smyrna, we may detect a
last trace of the original character of the woodland goddess.

Returning now to the main topic of the present section—the
ritual wheels of Isis, Nemesis, Tyche, and Fortuna—we have yet
to notice one extant specimen of a different but analogous sort.
It is a wheel of cast lead from the Millingen collection in the British
Museum (fig. 207), which was in all probability used for purposes
of divination. It revolves upon a central pin, and has four spokes
radiating from the angles of an inner square. Between every pair
of adjacent spokes is a standing male figure, who holds a wreath
in his right hand, a spear or sceptre in his left1. Round the rim
are Roman numerals (vi VII etc.) and groups of letters. Some of
these are to me illegible; but over the figure uppermost in my
illustration can be clearly seen PREPE, presumably the Greek prepei,
1 it is fitting,'—a word appropriate to the diviner's art2.

It is probable, though not quite certain3, that all such wheels of
Fortune were once intended to figure forth the sun. For—apart
from the fact that the sun was sometimes, as we have seen,
conceived as a wheel by the Greeks—there is the noteworthy
circumstance that the dedication-day of the temple of Fors Fortuna
was June 24^" the summer solstice5. Moreover, on the third
Sunday in June, which would correspond approximately with
Midsummer Day, at Douai a large wheel called the roue de fortune
used to be carried in procession before a wicker-work giant known

1 Mr F. H. Marshall in a note dated May 4, 1911 compares the magical disk
published by R. Wiinsch Antikes Zanbergerdt aus Pergamon {Jahrb. d. kais. deutsch.
arch. Inst. Erganzungsheft vi) Berlin 1905 p. 45 ff. pi. 2, figs. 8 f.—a convex plate of
bronze fitted with a swing handle and engraved with concentric circles and two series of
radii, between which are numerous Greek and Egyptian characters and cabalistic signs.
' The figure with parted arms on the Pergamon disk recalls,' says Mr Marshall, 'those on
the lead disk.'

2 M. Breal in the Rev. Et. Gr. 1908 xxi. 113 ff. argues that the use of irpeiret., ' il
convient,' explains the second element in tieoirpbiriov, 'oracle' (yet see Prellwitz Etym.
Worterb. d. Gr. Spr.2 p. 182, Boisacq Diet. etym. de la Langue Gr. p. 339).

3 W. Warde Fowler The Roman Festivals London 1899 pp. 161, 169 f. adopts an
attitude of cautious reserve.

4 R. Peter in Roscher Lex. Myth. i. 1501.

5 H. Gaidoz justly emphasised this fact: see W. Warde Fowler op. cit. p. 169 f.