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

4io The Cattle of the Sun

or flock were fifty oxen or sheep, as the case might be. They
were not subject to birth or death; and they were tended by
Phaethousa and Lampetie, two nymphs, whom Neaira bore to the
Sun-god himself1. Apollonios Rhodios describes Phaethousa as
shepherding the sheep with a silver staff in her hand, while Lam-
petie kept the oxen with a crook of shining mountain-bronze : the
oxen themselves were milk-white with golden horns2. Aristotle
gave what the Greeks called a * physical' explanation of this myth,
referring the 350 (= 7 x 50) oxen to the days of the lunar year3:
the scholiast on the Odyssey grasps at the clue and surmises that
the 350 (= 7 x 50) sheep in like manner denote the corresponding
nights4. F. G. Welcker half a century since defended and rein-
forced this view5. But are we prepared to interpret in the same
way the oxen of the Sun-god, which the giant Alkyoneus drove
from Erytheia6 and kept at Phlegrai on the Thracian Isthmos7?
And what of the cattle lifted by Hermes, which, according to one
account, belonged to the Sun8? It is surely of more moment to
observe that, even in historical times, actual flocks and herds were
kept for the Sun-god in various parts of Greece. There were
cattle of the Sun at Gortyna in Crete9. The Homeric hymn to the
Pythian Apollon, which cannot be later than the year 586 B.C. and
may be much older10, relates that certain Cretans—

Passing Lakonis reached the sea-girt town
And fields of the Sun that brings delight to men,
Even Tainaron, where the deep-fleeced sheep are fed
Of the kingly Sun and range a lovely land11.

Lastly, at Apollonia in Illyria the Sun-god had flocks about
which we are better informed. Herodotos12 in one of his delightful
digressions gives us the following narrative :

1 Od. 12. 127 ff., 261 ff.

2 Ap. Rhod. 4. 962 ff.

3 Aristot. frag. 167 Rose ap. schol. Od. 12. 129, Eustath. in Od. p. 1717, 32 ff. So
too Loukian. de astrolog. 22.

4 Schol. Od. 12. 129.

5 Welcker Gr. Gotterl. i. 405 f.

6 Apollod. 1. 6. 1.

7 Pind. Isth. 5 (6). 32 f., schol. ad loc. On the myth of Alkyoneus with the cattle of
Helios as a parallel to that of Herakles with the cattle of Geryoneus see C. Robert in
Hermes xix. 473 ff., M. Mayer Die Giganten und Titanen Berlin 1887 p. 172 ff., K.
Wernicke in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. i. 1581 f.

8 Schol. Dionys. Thrac. gramm. 2 in Bekker anecd. ii. 752, 12 ff.

9 Serv. in Verg. eel. 6. 60.

10 T. W. Allen and E. E. Sikes The Homeric Hymns London 1904 p. 67.

11 H. Ap. 232 ff.

12 Hdt. 9. 93 f. and ap. Eustath. in Od. p. 1717, 45 f. Konon the mythographer, who