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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#0421

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The Sun as the Bird of Zeus 345

rises on one side perpendicularly from the sea to a height of at
least 200 ft and has on its summit remains of the temple of
Apollon Leukdtas. Once a year at the festival of Apollon the
Leucadians, to avert evil, flung a criminal from the top of their
cliff. Wings of all sorts and birds were attached to him in order
to lighten his ' leap'; and many persons in small boats waited down
below to pick him up and, if possible, get him in safety beyond the
boundary1. Dr Frazer regards 'these humane precautions' as
probably ' a mitigation of an earlier custom of flinging the scape-
goat into the sea to drown2.' But this hardly explains the peculiar
feather-garb, which surely implies that the victim was a quasi-bird
like Ikaros. It is significant that the eponym Leukadios was the
son of Ikarios3. Further, the Leucadian 'leap' was persistently con-
nected with Sappho's love for Phaon4, the favourite of Aphrodite,
who was said to have founded a temple for his goddess on the
Leucadian rock5. But Phdon, as K. O. Muller pointed out6, is
simply a doublet of Pkaethon, ' the Shining One.' There is, there-
fore, much to be said for the view recently advanced by A. Fick7
that the Leucadian 'leap' was the ritual of a solar festival8, that

1 Strab. 452. Cp. Phot. lex. s.v. AevKarris' aKoireXos rrjs 'Hireipov, cup' o5 pLirTovcnv
avrovs eis to TreXayos oi lepeis (so MS., Schleusner cj. epaarai)' k.t.X.

2 Frazer Golden Bough2 iii. 126 and on Paus. 10. 32. 6 (v. 401). Cp. C. O. Muller
The History and Antiquities of the Doric Race Oxford 1830 i. 260 f.

:i Alcmaeonis frag. 5 Kinkel and Ephoros frag. 57 (Frag. hist. Gr. i. 248 Muller) ap.
Strab. 452, cp. id. 461, Eustath. in Od. p. 1964, 52. This Ikarios is called Ikaros by
Eustath. in II. p. 293, 12 f., schol. B. L. //. 2. 581, schol. Eur. Or. 457.

4 Menand. Leucadia frag. 1 (Frag. com. Gr. iv. 158 f. Meineke) ap. Strab. 452 and
Serv. in Verg. Aen. 3. 279, Turpilius (Com. Rom. frag. p. ii3ff. Ribbeck) ap. Serv. loc.
cit., Phot. lex. s.v. Aeu/cctTTjs. See further J. Ilberg in Roscher Lex. Myth. iii. 2272 ff.

Others declared that the 'leap' had first been taken by Kephalos son of Deioneus out
of love for Pterelas (Strab. 452, cp. id. 461), or by Leukates to escape the love of Apollon
(Serv. in Verg. Aen. 3. 279).

Ptol. Hephaist. ap. Phot. bibl. p. 153 a 7 ff. Bekker gives a long list of lovers who
had leapt from the rock, commencing with Aphrodite herself. She thereby got rid of her
love for Adonis: ^rjroucrrjs 5e ttjv airiav eiiretv Xeyerat t6v 'AwoXXoiva, ojs fA&VTis u>v eyv&Kei
di&tl 6 Zeus del epQv"Hpas epxbptevos eiri rrj irerpq, eKade^ero /cat aveiravero rod gpuros !

5 Serv. loc. cit.

e K. O. Midler Dorier2 i. 233, id. Geschichte der griechischen Litteraturi i. 292 f.
On (pdeiv, (paedttv see L. Meyer Handb. d. gr. Etym. iii. 348 ff., Prellwitz Etym. Wbrterb.
d. Gr. Spr.2 p. 482.

7 A. Fick Vorgriechische Ortsna?nen Gottingen 1905 p. 137 ff., id. Hattiden und
Danubier in Griechenland Gottingen 1909 p. 43. Fick ascribes this cult of the sun-bird
to the Leleges. His notion that ' RreptXas ist der "auf Fliigeln Daherfahrende," von
TTT^pov [sic] und iXa treiben, fahren gebildet' (Vorgr. Ortsn. p. 138) ignores the forms
rirepeXaos, IlrepeXews : the second element in the word is certainly Xaos, Xews (Roscher
Lex. Myth. iii. 3264).

8 On a copper of Nikopolis in Epeiros (?), struck by Trajan, Apollon Leukates
(^(jOAAOTTA. AEVKATHC) is shown, a nude figure on a pedestal with volutes : he
 
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