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

The Cattle of the Sun 409

meant to imply that the god will not hear the prayer of Oinomaos1.
If so, the artist is guilty of some confusion ; for the statue before
which the offering is about to be made is certainly not a Zeus, but
an archaic Artemis. However, other representations of the same
scene—and they are fairly common—consistently show the pillar
or statue in the central position to be that of Zeus2; and this agrees
with the literary tradition3.

Fig. 304.

In the myth of Atreus possession of the golden lamb and
control of the sun's course were alike accepted as proofs of fitness
to reign. Hence I formerly conjectured that the golden lamb
symbolised the sun itself4. This, however, is an ill-supported
guess: solar symbolism was at best a secondary development
of the myth, not its primary meaning.

v. The Cattle of the Sun.

In Homeric times the Sun-god was looked upon as the owner
of cattle both great and small. He had seven herds of oxen and
seven fair flocks of sheep in the island of Thrinakie. In each herd

1 P. Weizsacker in Roscher Lex. Myth. iii. 777.

2 Supra p. 36 ff. pis. iii, iv, j, v.

3 Diod. 4. 73. On the Argive identification of Apollon Kdrneios with Zeus see supra
p. 373 n. 1.

4 Class. Rev. 1903 xvii. 184, Folk-Lore 1904 xv. 271.

Later rationalists explained away the golden lamb and the reversal of the sun's course
by saying that Thyestes discovered the constellation of Aries and that Atreus pointed
out the difference between the real and apparent motions of the heavenly bodies : see
Eur. frag. 861 Nauck2 ap. Achill. Stat. isag. in Arat. phaen. 123 E, Polyb. ap. Strab.
23, Loukian. de astrolog. 12. Tzetz. chil. 1. 470 takes Hermes to be the planet Mercury
and Artemis to be the moon.