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

The Golden or Purple Lamb of Atreus 407

sceptre ends in a ram's head (fig. 302)1. This may be interpreted
as Herakles with Eurystheus, whose successor was Atreus of the
golden lamb.

But such regalia cannot explain the myth; at most they pre-
suppose it. It seems certain that the golden lamb (or ram) belongs
to a very ancient stratum of Greek religion. And in view of the
ram-Zeus, whom we have found among the Graeco-Libyans and
Thraco-Phrygians, I shall venture to suggest that the golden lamb
was a theriomorphic epiphany of Zeus, the forefather of the
Pelopidai. This might account for the repeated mention of a ram
in connexion with the family. Pausanias, when describing the
route from Mykenai to Argos, says :

' We come to the grave of Thyestes on the right. Over the grave is the
stone figure of a ram, because Thyestes obtained the golden lamb, after he had
committed adultery with his brother's wife2.'

A little further on he speaks of Thyestes' tomb as 'the Rams3'
in the plural. At Olympia the annual magistrates used to slay a
victim into a pit for Pelops, the father of Atreus and Thyestes,
and the victim was a black ram, the neck of which was given to
the 'woodman' of Zeus4. Pelops himself had won the kingdom
from Oinomaos, king of Pisa, whose practice it was to sacrifice a
ram to Zeus before starting on the chariot-race with the com-
petitor for the hand of his daughter Hippodameia5. The scene is

1 Wien. Vorlegebl. 1889 pi. 4.

Note that a ram's head was a frequent design on thrones, e.g. that of Zeus on the
kratSr of the Villa Papa Giulio and on the Madrid puteal (infra ch. ii § 9 (h) ii (77)), or
that of Damasistrate on her stele (Stai's Marbres et Bronzes: Athhies2 p. 124 f. no. 743,
Reinach Rep. Reliefs ii. 401 no. 3).

2 Paus. 2. 18. 1. On ancient Phrygian and modern Armenian tombs marked by stone
rams see J. G. Frazer ad loc.

3 Paus. 2. 18. 3.

4 Paus. 5. 13. 2 f.

Cp. the black sheep, male and female, slain into a pit by Odysseus for Teiresias etc.
(Od. 10. 516 ff., 11. 23 ff.) : Polygnotos in the Cnidian Ldsche at Delphi represented the
victims as black rams (Paus. 10. 29. 1) ; a vase at Paris shows a black-striped sheep and
a ram's head by the mouth of the pit (Furtwangler—Reichhold Gr. Vasenmalerei i. 300
pi. 60, Reinach Rep. Vasesi. 126, 1 f., Roscher Lex. Myth. iii. 671 f. fig. 10). So at Lebadeia
a ram was sacrificed over a pit for Agamedes (Paus. 9. 39. 6). Those who consulted the
oracle of Kalchas on a hill called Drion in Daunia sacrificed to him a black ram and slept
on its skin (Strab. 284). Near the foot of the same hill was a sanctuary of Podaleirios
(Strab. id.) and his tomb: Daunians who slept there on sheep-skins received oracles in
dreams (Lyk. Al. 1050 ff., Timaios frag. 15 ap. Tzetz. in Lyk. Al. 1050). At the
sanctuary of Amphiaraos near Oropos enquirers slew a ram and likewise slept on its skin
(Paus. 1. 34. 5). The nymph Albunea had a dream-oracle near Tibur: those who
consulted it slept on the skins of slain sheep (Verg. Aen. 7. 81 ff.). See further Loukian.
de dea Syr. 55 on a similar practice at Hierapolis, and Hieron. comm. in Pes. 65 (xxiv. 657
Migne) on incubation in the cult of Aesculapius.

5 Diod. 4. 73.