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

54-0 Marriage of the Sun and Moon in Crete

his guide a cow and found a city wherever this cow, tired with the way, lay on
its right side. On receipt of this oracle he pursued his course through Phokis.
He next fell in with a cow among the herds of Pelagon and followed after her
as she went. She, passing throughout Boiotia, tired and lay down on the spot
where Thebes is now. Kadmos, wishing to sacrifice the cow to Athena, sent
some of his men to fetch lustral water from the spring of Ares. But the snake
that guarded the spring and was said to be the child of Ares slew most of those
whom he sent. Kadmos in anger killed the snake and, at Athena's suggestion,
sowed its teeth. From them sprang the earth-born ones. Ares was enraged at
this and about to destroy Kadmos, when Zeus prevented him. Zeus gave him
to wife Harmonia, the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, but first bade him in
return for having destroyed the snake serve for a year1 ; the Muses were to
sing at his wedding, and each of the gods to bestow a gift upon Harmonia.'

The whole story gains immensely in coherence and significance,
if we assume that the guiding cow was none other than Europe in
animal form. The lost sister is thus recovered at the last, and the
Pythian oracle is vindicated from the charge of irrelevance. Besides,
it was, to say the least of it, appropriate that Zeus as a bull should
mate with Europe as a cow. If that be so, some further details of
the story are of interest. Pausanias, reporting the local Theban
tradition, states ' that this cow was purchased from the cowherds of
Pelagon, and that on each of the cow's flanks was a white mark
like the circle of the moon, when it is full2.' Pausanias adds that
the place, where the cow sank down exhausted, was still shown,
that there was an open-air altar on the spot and an image of
Athena dedicated by Kadmos, and that this Athena bore the
Phoenician title 6ngaz. A scholiast on Euripides4 gives what
purports to be the actual oracle delivered to Kadmos5:

Kadmos, Agenor's son, mark well my word.
At daybreak rise, quit Pytho the divine,
And clad as thou art wont, with oaken spear
In hand, fare forth through Phlegyai and Phokis
Until thou reach the cowherd and the cows
Of Pelagon Fate's nurseling. Then draw nigh,
And take the lowing cow whose either flank

1 Cp. Apollod. 3. 4. 2 KdS^uos 5e dp0' c3j> ^Kreivev didiov ("Apeos vibv Hercher, dvdpQv
Sevinus) eviavrbv edrjrevaep" Apec i\v 8e 6 evtavrbs Tore oktIo 'irt],

2 Paus. 9. 12. 1. Two Egyptising altars of Roman date, formerly in the Towneley
collection and now in the British Museum {Brit. Mus. Marbles x pis. 51, 52, Brit. Mus.
Cat. Sculpture iii. 390ff. nos. 2494, 2495, Reinach Re"p. Reliefs ii. 482 nos. 1—4, 5—8),
represent a bull with a six-rayed star and another with a crescent moon on his flank.
A relief in a tomb of the Roman period at Kom el Chougafa shows the Pharaoh offering
incense (?) to a statue of Apis, who has a crescent on his side (F. W. von Bissing Les
Bas-reliefs de Kom el Chougafa Munich 1901 pi. 9 Text p. 7).

3 Paus. 9. 12. 2. On the site and significance of this cult see Frazer Pausanias v. 48 f.

4 Schol. Eur. Phoen. 638.

5 Nonn. Dion. 4. 293 ff. is another attempt to hitch the supposed oracle into verse.