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

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https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14695#0506

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428 The Significance of the Ram

Analogous customs are still observed here and there on Greek
soil. Sir Arthur Evans in his remarkable account of a pillar-shrine
at Tekekioi, a Turkish village between Skopia and Istib in Make-
donia, says: ' The floor is strewn with the fleeces of sacrificed
rams1.' And Dr W. H. D. Rouse, describing another Moslem
shrine on the highest point of the citadel at Mytilene, notes : 'They
keep sheepskins here, and the worshippers wrap themselves in these
when they pray2.' He justly suggests comparison with the ' fleece
of Zeus.'

It will be seen that these scattered indications of a divine ram
in the cults of Zeus Meilichios, Zeus Ktesios, etc. fit on to and
corroborate the evidence already adduced of a Graeco-Libyan3 and
Thraco-Phrygian Zeus4, who appeared sometimes as a ram, some-
times as a snake. For both Zeus Meilichios and Zeus Ktesios were
likewise anguiform, as we shall have occasion to note when we
come to discuss their cults. Moreover, just as Zeus Ammon5 and
Zeus Sabdzios6 had a secondary Dionysiac form, so Zeus Meilichios
was replaced in Naxos by Dionysos Meilichios"'.

x. The Significance of the Ram in the cults of Zeus.

We have now passed in review the various cults in which Zeus
appears as a ram-god, and it is time to draw conclusions. From
the welter of detail and local divergence two or three facts of
constant import emerge. In the first place it is clear that over
a wide area of the ancient world, from Meroe in the south to
Moesia in the north, Zeus was intimately associated with the ram :
the Graeco-Libyan Zeus Amnion, the Thraco-Phrygian Zeus
Sabdzios, the Thessalian Zeus Laphystios, the Zeus Aktaios or
Akraios of Mount Pelion, the Zeus Meilichios and the Zeus Ktesios
of Athens, are cases in point. Secondly, it would seem that in the
long run most of these cults took on a solar character; but that

1 A. J. Evans in the Journ. Hell. Stud. 1901 xxi. 200—204 figs. 69 f.

2 W. H. D. Rouse in Folk-Lore 1896 vii. 151.
:! Supra p. 358 ff.

4 Supra p. 390 ff.

5 Supra p. 371 ff.

6 Supra p. 395 n. 3, p. 398 ff.

7 Andriskos frag. 3 (Frag. hist. Gr. iv. 304 Miiller) and Aglaosthenes frag. 5 (Frag,
hist. Gr. iv. 294 Miiller) ap. Athen. 78 c, Plout. v. Ant. 24, de esu cam. 1. 2, quaestt.
conviv. 1. 1. 3, non posse suav. vivi sec. Epic. 22, Eustath. in Od. p. 1964, 18 f.,
F. Creuzer Meletemata e disciplina antiquitatis Lipsiae 1817 p. 22, Scholl—Studemund
anecd. i. 268, 276, 282.
 
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