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

The Cow and the Moon in Crete 469

he followed it till it bent its legs and fell down on the site of Ilion1.
This cow was probably divine ; for in Phrygia2, as elsewhere in
ancient times3, to kill a plough-ox was a capital offence4. A third
story of like character tells how Kadmos, in obedience to a Delphic
oracle, followed a cow belonging to Pelagon, son of Amphidamas,
and on the spot where it lay down founded the city of Thebes ; but
of this I must speak more in detail in a later section5.

xii. The Cow and the Moon in Crete.

If the brilliant bull in the herd of king Minos had thus come to
symbolise the sun, we can discover a meaning in another story told
of the same monarch. Apollodoros6 says of Glaukos, son of Minos :

' Glaukos, while still an infant, was pursuing a mouse7 when he fell into ajar
of honey and was drowned. After his disappearance Minos had search made
for him everywhere and consulted the oracles about the right way to find him.

1 Arj<r<j7)s 6 Aa/x\paKi]v6s ap. schol. vet. and ap. Tzetz. in Lyk. Al. 29 "Attjs d7r' aKpwv

f30VTrXaU0KTL(XT0}v \6(p01V.

2 Ail. de nat. an. 12. 34 Qptiyes be eav Trap' atirois rt? aporrjpa airoKTeivr) fiovv, i) fafx'ia
ddvaros aury, Nikol. Damask, frag. 128 (Frag: hist. Gr. iii. 461 Muller) £av be" tls
Trap' avrois (the Phrygians) yewpyLnbv fBovv &7roKTeLvy 77 (TKedos tu>v irepl yewpyiav KXeipy,
Oavdru) fo/yuouffi.

3 Van*, rer. rust. 2. 5. 4 ab hoc (sc. bove) antiqui manus ita abstineri voluerunt, ut
capite sanxerint, siquis occidisset. qua in re testis Attice, testis Peloponnesos. nam ab
hoc pecore Athenis Buzuges nobilitatus, Argis Homogyros (supra p. 459 n. 4), Colum. de
re rust. 6 praef. cuius (sc. bovis) tanta fuit apud antiquos veneratio ut tarn capitale esset
bovem necasse quam civem.

4 Cp. the /3ov(p6via at Athens (infra ch. ii § 9 (h) ii), the sacrifice of a calf dressed in
buskins to Dionysos ''AvdpwiroppaiaTrjs in Tenedos (Ail. de nat. an. 12. 34), and analogous
rites (W. Robertson Smith Lectures on the Religion of the Semites'1 London 1907 p. 3041?.,
Frazer Golden Bough? : Spirits of Corn and Wild ii. 46% W. Warde Fowler The Roman
Festivals London 1899 p. 327 ff.). Prometheus was said to have been the first to kill
an ox (Plin. nat. hist. 7. 209): see Roscher Lex. Myth. iii. 3055.

5 Infra ch. i § 6 (g) xviii.

6 Apollod. 3. 3. 1, cp. Tzetz. in Lyk. Al. 811, Aristeid. or. 46. 307 (ii. 398 Dindorf)
with schol. Aristeid. p. 728, 29 ff. Dindorf.

7 For fivv, which is supported by Tzetz. in Lyk. Al. 81 r, A. Westermann, after
Commelin, reads /xviav, 'a fly,' cp. Frag. hist. Gr. i. 152 Muller ixvlav.

The first part of the story implies the custom of preserving the dead in honey
(W. Robert-Tornow De apiu.ni mellisque apud
veteres significatione Berolini 1893 p. 128 ff.) and
burying him in a plthos (cp. Gruppe Gr. Myth.
Rel. p. 816 n. 5). Glaukos' pursuit of the 'fly'
may be based on the art-type of Hermes evoking
the dead from a burial-jar, while a soul in the
form of a bee (Gruppe op. cit. p. 801 n. 6)
hovers above it: the type is best represented
by gems (figs. 325, 326 = Muller—Wieseler
Denkm. d. alt. Kunst ii. pi. 30, 333, 332,

cp. id. 332"). See further Harrison Proleg. Gk. Yis. 325. Fig. 326.

^/.2p.43f.