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

Zeus and Argos

459

Argos was not, like Zeus, a bull, at least he wore a bull's hide.
And this was no unimportant detail of his myth: Apollonios
Rhodios in his account of the Argonauts tells how—

Argos, Arestor's son, from foot to shoulder
Had girt a bull's hide black with shaggy hair1.

And Hyginus describes the same hero as ' an Argive clad in a
hairy bull's hide2.' On the strength of this hide Miss Harrison,
following an acute conjecture of H. D. Muller, suggested 'that Argos
Panoptes is the real husband of Io, Argos who wore the bull-skin...,
who when he joins the Argonautic expedition still trails it behind
him..., who is the bull-god3.' But we are never told by any
ancient authority that Argos was either a bull or a god4. It seems
wiser, therefore, to suppose that he wore the bull-skin in order to
assimilate himself to the Argive bull-god Zeus5. On this showing
Argos was to Zeus very much what Io was to Hera.

Again, as Io bore the further title Kallithyessa, so Argos was
also Panoptes. Kallithyessa, 1 She of the fair sacrifices,' was prob-
ably a cult-title of Hera6. Panoptes, 1 He who sees all,' occurs
repeatedly in the poets as a title of Zeus7, a fact which supports

1 Ap. Rhod. i. 324 f.

2 Hyg. fab. 14 p. 48, 4 Schmidt. Cp. Aristoph. eccl. 79 f. vr\ tov Ata tov cwTrjp'
iirLT-qbei-os y av rjp \ ttjv tov YIolvotttov 8i.<pd£pav evij/x^evos, Dionysios (Skytobrachion) ap.
schol. Eur. Phoen. 1116 j3jjpaav avTov rjix^eadaL (p-qai.

3 Miss J. E. Harrison in the Class. Ken. 1893 vii. 76, after H. D. Midler Mythologie
der griechischen Stamme, Gdttingen 1861 ii. 273 ff. Miss Harrison has recently somewhat
shifted her view-point and writes to me as follows (June 14, 1912): 'I now absolutely
hold your position that Argos was a celebrant—only I go much further in thinking, not
that Argos was the god, but that the god Argos arose out of the worshipper.'

4 Aug. de civ. Dei 18. 6 states that Argos after his death began to be regarded as
a god, being honoured with a temple and sacrifices: while he was reigning (as king at
Argos), these divine honours were paid to a certain private man named Homogyros,
who had first yoked oxen to the plough, and had been struck by lightning.

5 Cp. fourn. Hell. Stud. 1894 xiv. 120 f. On a krattr from Ruvo, belonging to the
Jatta collection, Argos is clad in a bull's hide (fig. 318 from Mon. d. Inst, ii pi. 59,
Lenormant—de Witte El. mon. cer. iii pi. 101, Roscher Lex. Myth. ii. 274, Reinach Rep.
Vases i. in, 4); but Overbeck Gr. Kunstmyth. Zeus p. 593 n. 189 points out that on
other vases he wears other hides, the artistic being less conservative than the literary
tradition.

The Jatta krater shows a well-marked tendency to duplicate its figures. In the lower
register the Satyr on the left is balanced by the Satyr on the right. In the upper register
Eros and Aphrodite on the left are mirrored by almost identical forms (Peitho? and
Pothos? according to S. Reinach) on the right. Zeus seated on the mountain next to
Hera similarly corresponds with Argos seated on the mountain near to Io. The latter
couple is the bovine counterpart of the former—witness the bull's hide of Argos, the
cow's horns and cow's ear of Io.

6 Supra p. 453 f.

7 Aisch. Eum. 1045 Zei)s 6 Travoirras (so Musgrave for MSS. Zei>s TravToirras), Orph.