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

566 The Bull and the Sun in Syria

the left Dionysos leans against a vine with Ariadne beside him
and his tkzasos grouped around. On the right the same deity as a
child is seated on a pantheress, danced about by Bacchants and
Maenads. It can hardly be doubted that the temple as a whole
was that of Dionysos, who at Heliopolis as elsewhere was worshipped
side by side with Zeus.

We have yet to notice a remarkable and much-canvassed coin-
type of Philippus Senior (figs. 43 31, 4342). On a rocky eminence
covered with shrubs rises a large temple with a flight of many steps
leading up to it, and what looks like a terrace-wall beside it.
Between the steps and the temple is an altar, and near by stands a
vase. The precinct-wall encloses a considerable space to the left
of the temple; and in the field beyond this space is a caduceus.
Now the Germans have shown that the temple of Dionysos was
later than the temple of Zeus and belonged to the same period

as the Propylaion, which they hold to have been constructed
c. 200 A.D.3 Since, however, the capitals of the Propylaion were
still being decorated in the reign of Caracalla (211-217 A.D.)4, it is
very possible that the new buildings were not finished till the time
of Philippus Senior (244-249 A.D.). If so, it is open to us to
suppose that certain coins issued by this emperor—himself an Arab
of Trachonitis5—represented the akropolis as it looked before the
recent building-operations6, whilst others struck in the names of
the emperor and his wife displayed the new Propylaion in all its

1 F. De Saulcy Numismatique de la terre sainte Paris 1874 p. 13 pi. 1, 4, with legend
COLIVLAVG I FELHEL (cp. supra p. 558 n. 2).

2 Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Galatia, etc. p. 293 no. 18 (vase in precinct, caduceus in
field) pi. 36, 7, cp. p. 293 no. 19 (vase in field, caduceus in precinct).

3 O. Puchstein Fiihrer durch die Ruinen von Baalbek Berlin 1905 p. 33.

4 Supra p. 556.

5 Aur. Vict, de Caes. 28. 1 Arabs Thraconites, cp. Zonar. epit. hist. 12. 19 wp^To 8' 4k
Boar pav.

6 Another possible explanation of the type would be to say that the die-sinker, in
order to simplify his design, bodily omitted the Propylaion and the temple of Dionysos.

Fig. 433-

Fig- 434-