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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#0516

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438 Zeus, Io, and Epaphos

acquire solar powers. It is, therefore, allowable to conjecture that
the obscure and presumably non-Greek1 name Bdkchos was in fact
borrowed2 from that of the Egyptian bull Bakha%. The name
thus taken over, say by the Libyo-Greeks, appears to have passed
into Crete4 and Asia Minor5, thence finding its way into Europaean
Greece6. Hesychios' statement that bdkchos was a Phoenician word
for ' lamentation' is hardly more than an etymological guess7.

Less problematic is another and a better-known case—that of
Apis. The Greeks named him Epaphos* and brought him into
connexion with their own mythology9, declaring that he was the
son of Io by Zeus, who impregnated her by a touch10 at Kanobos.
The story is summarised by Aischylos in the earliest of his extant
plays, the Suppliants, where the fifty daughters of Danaos fleeing
from the fifty sons of Aigyptos seek the protection of Pelasgos,
king of Argos, on the ground of kinship. The passage was thus
rendered by Prof. L. Campbell:

Choms. 'Tis said that in this Arg'ive land erewhile

Io was doorkeeper of Hera's Fane.
King. Certes she was ; strong Rumour makes us know.

Is't said that Zeus to mortal maid came near?
Cho. Yea, and that Hera knew, and would prevent.
King. How ended such a high-enkindled feud?
Cho. Your goddess turned the woman to a cow.
King. But was the horned heifer safe from Zeus ?
Cho. He took the likeness of a leaping bull.
King. What then contrived the mighty Queen of Heaven ?

1 L. Meyer Handb. d. gr. Etyni. iii. 78 ' Etymologisch nicht verstandlich.' See
further Gruppe Gr. Myth. Rel. p. 1417 f.

2 The loan would be facilitated not only by the bovine form of the god and his
fertilising function, but also by his snake and his sacred mountain.

3 My suggestion has, I find, been anticipated by F. Creuzer Symbolik undMythologie%
Leipzig and Darmstadt 1840 ii. 203 (' Bacis, worm vielleicht bedeutende Spuren liegen
des Einflusses Aegyptischer Vorstellungen auf die Bacchische Religion der Griechen,' cp.
ib. 1842 iii. 641 n. 2).

4 Eur. Cret. frag. 472, 14 f. Nauck2 Kovp-qrwv | /3d/cxos ^KK-qd'qv btriwdeis.

5 Farnell Cults of Gk. States v. 300 n. 73. 6 Cp. Gruppe loc. cit.

7 Hesych. fianxov KKavdfxbv. Qoivmes. Cp. the Hebrew bak{h)a, 'he wept.' But
it seems more probable that the name Bd/c%os hails from north Africa like BoKxopis -
Bukunirinif king of Lower Egypt {supra p. 431), B6/c%os or Bocchus king of Mauretania
{infra p. 502), etc.

8 Hdt. 2. 38, 2. 153, 3. 28.

9 See J. Escher-Burkli in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. v. 2708 f.

10 Aisch. P.v. 849 iiracjiGiv arapfiel xeti°' K0& Ot-y&v p^bvov, suppl. 18 f. e£ eiracprjs /cd£
eirLivvoias \ Aids, 45 f. e£ eirnrvo'ias | Ztjpos ecfxxxpiv, 1066 X€LPL Trcuwiug KaraaxtQuv, Apollod.
2. 1. 3 a\f/d/j.evos, Nonn. Dion. 3. 2846°. aK-qpaaiwv ore k6\ttwi> | 'lvax^s fia/mXiys eiratp-qaaro
deios aKoirys | x£PaLP epw/xaveeaai, schol. Eur. Phoen. 678 6 Zeus €Tra(pT]ad/j.€pos ttjs 'Iovs
(b.C.M. i.), aivb yap rrjs rod Atos eTrcuprjs irpbs 'Itb' J^iracpos eyiveTO (Gu.), Tzetz. in Lyk. Al.

63O €K T7)S TOV AtOS eTTCUpTJS.
 
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