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

Zeus and the Solar Disk

293

building surmounted by a round Gorgoneion (fig. 212)1. Finally,
two Doric temples of a late date near the monastery of Kourno on
the Taygeton promontory have akroteria shaped like a ring with
an inner wheel or rosette2. Now all these forms are intelligible as
variations of the solar disk ; and that they really symbolised the
sun may be inferred from the fact that in Roman times they were
often replaced by the four-horse chariot of the sun-god himself3.

Again, when we remember the Egyptian custom of putting the
solar disk with its uraeus-snakes over every sacred doorway4, we

Fig. 212.

shall be emboldened to assign a solar origin to the phidle or
circular shield so frequently found in representations of classical
pediments. This phidle or shield is at first flanked by a couple
of snakes (fig. 213)5. But the snakes gradually degenerate into

1 O. Jahn in the Ann. d. Inst. 1848 xx. 212 f. pi. l, Overbeck Gall. her. Bildtu.
i. 741 f. pi. 30, 8, Lenormant—de Witte £l. mon. ce"r. hi. 189^ pi. 71.

2 Lebas—Reinach Voyage Arch. p. 139 f. pis. ii—2, ii— 5, 3, ii—7, ii—ir, 5.

3 Prop. 2. 31. 11, Plin. nat. hist. 28. 16, 35. 157, Plout. v. Poplic. 13, Fest. p. 274^
9 ff. Midler. Cp. T. L. Donaldson Architectura Numismatica London 1859 P* 6ff.
no. 3, p. 12 ff. no. 4, p. 35 ff. no. 8, Stevenson—Smith—-Madden Diet. Rom. Coins p. 170 f.,
Daremberg—Saglio Diet. Ant. i. 45 fig. 82, Dunn Baukunst d. Rom.2 p. 102 ff. figs. 112—
115, supra p. 45 fig. 15.

Occasionally the quadriga of the sun-god occupies the pediment: so on a bronze-
relief of Zeus Sabdzios in his shrine {infra p. 392 n. 1).

4 Supra p. 205 f.

5 Roulez Vases de Leide p. 79 ff. pi. 19. Cp. an Apulian amphora at Naples, on
which the pediment of Hades' palace has a Gorgoneion between two fish-tailed monsters
(Heydemann Vasensamml. Neapel p. 5ioff. no. 3222, Mon. d. Inst, viii pi. 9, Baumeister
Denkm. iii. 1927 fig. 2042 a).

Early Greek architects commonly filled the angles of their pediments with the tails of
snaky or fishy figures, and their example was followed far and wide (see e.g. A. Foucher