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

414 The Golden or Purple Ram of Phrixos

Dr J. G. von Hahn points out—and indeed it is sufficiently
obvious—that the folk-tale recalls the myth of Danae1. It is
instructive to summarise the two in parallel columns :—

The myth of Danae. The folk-tale from Efteiros.

Akrisios, king of Argos, kept his A certain king kept his daughter shut
daughter Danae shut up in an up in an underground chamber of
underground chamber of bronze. silver.

Despite the king's precautions, Zeus Despite the king's precautions, a young
visited her in a shower of gold, and man visited her in the fleece of a
became by her the father of Perseus. golden lamb, and won her for his

The king enclosed Danae and Perseus wife,
in a chest, and flung them into the
sea.

A comparison of the myth, localised at Argos, dated in the reign
of king Akrisios, and throughout marked by definite names, with
the folk-tale, which, like so many Mdrchen, is placeless, timeless,
nameless, shows at once that the former is more developed than
the latter. In particular, the whole episode of Danae and Perseus
in the chest, which forms so striking a feature of the myth, is a
sequel added to the original tale. It re-appears in quite a different
connexion in another folk-tale from the same village of Kapessovo2.
But the first part of the Danae-myth is strictly parallel to the first
folk-tale, and the gold-showering Zeus of the one is comparable
with the golden lamb of the other. This variation is intelligible,
if, as I have supposed, the golden lamb of Atreus and Thyestes
was the epiphany of Zeus himself.

vii. The Golden or Purple Ram of Phrixos.

The golden lamb of the Pelopidai, with its relations to Zeus on
the one hand and to the sun on the other, can hardly be discussed
without reference to the golden ram of Phrixos and Helle. The
myth in question has come down to us through a large number
of channels, good, bad, and indifferent3. The oldest version

1 J. G. von Hahn op. cit. ii. 206. Other resemblances to the Danae-myth are noted
ib. ii. 201, 310 f.

2 '0 Micros adpcoTTos, ' The Half-man': text in J. Pio NEOEAAHNIKA IIAPAMT0IA
p. 21 ff., German translation in J. G. von Hahn ' Griechische unci albanesische Marchen
i. 102 ff. The princess, her child, and the Half-man, who is suspected of being its father,
are enclosed together in an iron vessel with a lid and sent adrift on the sea, but are
rescued by magic means. The situation is that described by von Hahn as the 1 Danae-
formula'' and illustrated by him from Walachian and Italian tales (see J. G. von Hahn
op. cit. i. 49).

3 The evidence, literary and monumental, is put together by J. Escher-Biirkli in
Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. ii. 1929—1933, K. Seeliger in Roscher Lex. Myth. i. 669—
675, 2028—2029, Turk ib. hi. 2458—2467.