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

404 The Golden or Purple Ram in Italy

Virgil in his famous fourth Eclogue, anticipating the dawn of a
brighter age, says :

Nor wool shall learn its parti-coloured lies ;

But in the meadows of himself the ram

Shall change his fleece for sweetly-blushing purple

Or saffron stain, and of its own accord

Scarlet shall clothe the lambs what time they graze1.

One of the omens portending the accession of Diadumenus was
that twelve purple sheep, one of them parti-coloured, were born on
his father's estate2.

In the folk-tale of Cupid and Psyche the second task imposed
on the unhappy Psyche is thus described by Apuleius3:

'Just as Aurora drove up, Venus called Psyche, and began : "Do you see
that wood, all along the banks of the river that flows past, with its lower waters
falling into the fountain close by us ? There are sheep there with gleaming
fleeces that grow with the colour of gold, grazing and wandering about, with no
one looking after them. Seek out one tuft from all that growth of costly fleece,
any way you like, and bring it to me : that is my command." Psyche went off
with a will, not however with the intention of doing as she was bid, but to seek
rest in her misfortunes by hurling herself from the cliff over the stream. But
the green reed by the river, the nursling of soft music, was divinely inspired by
the gentle rustling of the balmy breeze, and gave its oracle forth. " O Psyche,
exercised by great and numerous woes, pollute not my sacred waters by thy
most wretched death, nor yet approach the formidable sheep on yonder bank.
For they are wont to become heated from the raging sunshine and rush about
madly and savagely, bringing death to mortals in their fury, with their sharp
horns and stony foreheads and, sometimes too, envenomed teeth. But when
midday has assuaged the heat of the sun, and the cattle have settled down to
rest in the cool that comes up from the river, thou canst hide thyself secretly
beneath that giant plane-tree, which drinks from the same current as myself:
and then, when the sheep have passed from their first fury and are relieved of
mental tension, strike the foliage of the neighbouring wood : there thou shalt
find the golden wool, which is everywhere clinging and cleaving to the under-
growth." So spake the reed, so frankly and humanely, and taught poor Psyche
the way of health, though her sickness was unto death. She did not fail to put
in practice the instruction she had received through her hearing, and of which
she had no cause to repent. She was careful in everything, and, by an easy
exercise of petty theft, she filled her bosom with the soft yellow gold, and
brought it back to Venus.'

Fulgentius, writing about the year 500 A.D., describes these
sheep with golden fleece as 'the flocks of the Sun4.' And he is
probably right; for their fury varied, as Apuleius says, with the
heat of that luminary. Psyche finding the fleece of gold adhering

1 Verg. eel. 4. 42 ff.

2 Ael. Lampr. Ant. Diadum. 4. 5, cp. ib. 3. 3 quasi sidereus et caelestis emicuit.

3 Apul. met. 6. 11 —13 trans. F. D. Byrne.

4 Fulgent, myth. 3. 6 p. 718 van Staveren.