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

Zeus and the Bull in Cretan Myth 547

Asterios1 or Asteros2, who married her and, being childless himself,
reared the children that she bore to Zeus. Finally, Tzetzes asserts
that Sarpedon, Minos, and Rhadamanthys, these very fosterlings,
were the sons of Zeus Asterioss. It looks as though the contamina-
tion of the Gortynian Zeus with the solar cycle had begun as early
as c. 700 B.C. At what date king Asterion or Asterios developed
into Zeus Asterios, it is hard to say. A red-figured amphora and
red-figured fish-plates at Saint Petersburg show Europe on the bull
approaching Crete, where she is met by a Zeus-like king, presum-
ably Asterion or Asterios. He advances to greet her sceptre in
hand (fig. 405)4, or awaits on his throne the arrival of her cortege,
the coming marriage being indicated by the presence of two Erotes
(fig. 414)5. Perhaps the shift from king Asterios to Zeus Asterios
was the work of the Hellenistic age—an age notoriously marked
by recrudescence of the early belief in the essential divinity of
kings6.

But by Hellenistic times Asterios had ceased to connote 'Solar.'
To the average understanding the word now meant 'Starry' and
nothing else. Hence Zeus was brought into more definite relation
to the starry sky. Silver coins of Crete struck by Nero show Zeus
with a thunderbolt in one hand, a sceptre in the other, surrounded
by seven stars (fig. 415)7. A copper struck by Titus represents
Zeus Kretagenes amid the same group of stars in the act of hurling
his bolt (fig. 115)8. On another copper struck by Trajan the infant
Zeus is seated on a globe with a goat beside him and the stars
above (fig. 28)9. Nor was the connexion between the god and the
king forgotten. We have already compared the last-named coin-
type with that on which Domitian's infant son appears sitting on a
globe and flanked by the stars (fig. 27)10. Similarly silver coins of

1 Diod. 4. 60, Nonn. Dion. 13. 222 ff., 35. 384 ff., 37. 46 ff., 81 ff., 724 ft'., 40. 284 ft".,
Hieron. chron. ann. Abr. 570, cp. ib. 572.

2 Lyk. Al. 1301 'AaTepy (Herwerden cj. 'Acrrepty, Wilamowitz cj. 'Acrrepc; but see
C. von Holzinger ad loc). Cp. Aug. de civ. Dei 18. 12, who calls him Xanthus.

3 Tzetz. chil. 1. 473, in Lyk. Al. 1301 (supra p. 545 n. 5).

4 Supra p. 531.

5 A fish-plate found at Elteghen in 1879 (L. Stephani in the Compte-rendu
St. Pit. 1880 p. 105 ff. with fig.)- Cp. three very similar plates from Great Blisnitza
previously published (id. ib. 1866 p. 79 ff. pi. 3, 1 and 2, Vase?isamml. St. Petersburg ii.
379 f. no. 1915, Overbeck Gr. Kuntsmyth. Apollon p. 365 Atlas pi. 6, 20 a, b, Reinach
Kip. Vases i. 21, 22, 5, 6).

6 Class. Rev. 1903 xvii. 278, Folk-Lore 1904 xv. 303.

7 Hunter Cat. Coins ii. 165 pi. 40, 2, J. N. Svoronos Nwnismatique de la Crete
ancienne Macon 1890 i. 340 no. 34 (Vienna) pi. 32, 22 (= my fig. 415), cp. ib. no. 35
pi. 32, 21 on which Zeus wears a himdtion and an eagle is added in the field.

8 Supra p. 149. 9 Supra p. 52. 10 Supra p. 51 f.

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