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

622 The Bull and the Sun in Syria

of the Heddernheim plate1 raise a further question. What have
lilies to do with a god who stands on a bull grasping a double-axe
and a thunderbolt ? To modern ears this sounds a strange combi-
nation of frailty with force. We note, however, that the lilies—
' mountain-ranging lilies2,' as Meleagros termed them—are some-
how related to the mountain3. On the Komlod dedication they
spring from the apex of a plate, which, if we are on the right track,
originally symbolised a mountain. On the Heddernheim plate
they were held up by deities emergent from heaps of stones. On
other plates, to be considered later4, the whole pyramid is sur-
rounded and topped by a growth of lilies. We are reminded of
the Egyptian vignette in which the divine cow looks out from the
mountain-side and thereby causes vegetation to flourish5. Now
the storm-god on his bull was essentially a fertilising power. It
may therefore be supposed that the lilies appear on his mountain
as a sign and symbol of fertility6.

This belief, probably indigenous in the Mediterranean area,
underlay the decorative use of the flower from ' Minoan7' to
mediaeval times8. Lilies were wrought by Pheidias on the
golden robe of his great chryselephantine Zeus9. Another statue
of Zeus at Olympia, turned towards the rising sun, held an eagle
in one hand, a thunderbolt in the other,* and on its head wore
a wreath of lilies : it was an offering of the Metapontines and the
work of Aristonous, an Aeginetan sculptor10. Yet another Zeus at
Olympia, made by Askaros the Theban, a pupil of Kanachos (?),
and dedicated by the Thessalians, represented the god bearing
a thunderbolt in his right hand and ' crowned as it were with
flowers11.' On an Etruscan mirror figuring the birth of Dionysos

1 Supra p. 620.

2 Anth. Pal. 5. 143. 2 (Meleagros) OdXKei 5' ovpe<ri(poiTa Kpiva.

3 The Muses, mountain-deities {supra p. 104 n. 2), are KpLvo<XTe<pavoL (Auson. epist.
12. 14): see Gruppe Gr. Myth. Pel. p. 297 n. 1.

4 Infra p. 627 ff. 5 Stipra p. 515.

6 Plin. nat. hist. 21. 24 alba lilia...nihilque est fecundius una radice quinquagenos
saepe emittente bulbos.

7 Perrot—Chipiez Hist, de r Art vi. 783 pi. 19, 5, Sir A. J. Evans in the Ann. Brit.
Sch. Ath. 1900—1901 vii. 15 ff. fig. 6, E. Reisinger Kretische Vasenmalerei voni
Kamares- bis zum Palast-stil Leipzig and Berlin 1912 p. 45.

8 A. de Gubernatis La viythologie desplantes Paris 1882 ii. 200 ff.

9 Paus. 5. 11. 1 tco 5e ifjariq} fwcua re /cat t&v dv8Q>v ret Kpiva early ifj.7rewoL7jfj.em.

10 Paus. 5. 22. 5. The manuscripts in general read eTrlneiTai bk avrco /cat eVt rfj
Ke(pa\7j erre'epavos, dv07] ra 7)piva, which is kept by F. Spiro (1903). But cod. Lb. has
7)pLva. And Palmer's cj. Kpiva is accepted by Schubart and Walz (1838—1839, 1847),
L. Dindorf (1845), J. G. Frazer (1898), and H. Hitzig—PI. Blumner (1901).

11 Paus. 5. 24. 1 f. eo-Te<pavojfj.evov de 01a 8r) tivdeai, k. t. A.

The Due de Luynes in the Nouv. Ann. 1836 i. 391 compared the Talleyrand Zeus of