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

524 Marriage of the Sun and Moon in Crete

Crete ; for the Minotaur, offspring" of the solar bull and the lunar
cow, was—as we have said1—named Asterios or Asterion, 'the
Starry.'

Dr J. G. Frazer, following K. Hoeck2 and W. H. Roscher3, holds
that the same custom of sun-and-moon marriage is attested on the
one hand by the myth of Zeus and Europe, on the other by that of
Minos and Britomartis or Diktynna :

' The moon rising" from the sea was the fair maiden Europa coming across the
heaving billows from the far eastern land of Phoenicia, borne or pursued by her
suitor the solar bull. The moon setting- in the western waves was the coy
Britomartis or Dictynna, who plunged into the sea to escape the warm embrace
of her lover Minos, himself the sun. The story how the drowning maiden was
drawn up in a fisherman's net may well be, as some have thought, the explanation
given by a simple seafaring folk of the moon's reappearance from the sea in the
east after she had sunk into it in the west4.'

But here, as it seems to me, more caution is needed. I do not
deny that ultimately both Europe and Diktynna came to be
regarded as moon-goddesses—the former through the influence of
Phoenician religion, the latter by assimilation to the lunar aspect of
Artemis. But I do deny that originally and essentially either
Europe or Diktynna stood for the moon. The matter is one that
in this connexion must be further investigated.

Europe bore to Zeus a son Dodon5 or Dodonos6, the eponym of
Dodona. This implies that there was a recognised similarity
between the cults of Crete and Epeiros, Zeus and Europe being
the Cretan equivalents of Zeus Ndios and his Dodonaean partner7.
If so, Europe was at first a great earth-mother, who sent up
vegetation from her home in the ground8. Strong support for this
view is to be found in the fact that at Lebadeia in Boiotia those
who went down into the oracular cave sacrificed not only to
Trophonios and his sons, but also to Apollon, Kronos, Zeus

1 Supra p. 493 ff.

2 K. Hoeck Kreta Gottingen 1823 i. 90 ff., ib. 1828 ii. 170.

3 W. H. Roscher Uber Selene und Verwandtes (Studien zur griechischen Mythologie
unci Kulturgeschichte vom vergleichenden Standpunkte iv) Leipzig 1890 pp. 45 f., n6ff.,
128 ff.

4 Frazer Golden Boughz: The Dying God p. 73.

5 Akestodoros {Frag. hist. Gr. ii. 463 f. Miiller) ap. Steph. Byz. s.v. AwSw^ry.

6 Schol. T. V. //. 16. 233.

7 This was seen by J. Escher-Burkli in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. vi. 1287 f.; but
this scholar went off on a wrong track, when he detected at Dodona the cult of a
divine pair Evpvo-rra and 'Eupdiirr].

8 Paus. 10. 12. 10 (in the chant of the Dodonaean priestesses) Ya Kaprrovs aviei, 81b
k\v^€T€ ixartpa Yaiav, cp. Class. Rev. 1903 xvii. 179 f.

Dr L. R. Farnell likewise concludes that Europe was 'the Cretan earth-goddess'
(Cults of Gk. States ii. 479), 'the Eteocretan earth-goddess' (ib. ii. 632), later assimi-
lated to Astarte.