Universitätsbibliothek HeidelbergUniversitätsbibliothek Heidelberg
Metadaten

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

DOI Seite / Zitierlink: 
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14695#0744

DWork-Logo
Überblick
loading ...
Faksimile
0.5
1 cm
facsimile
Vollansicht
OCR-Volltext
658 The Significance of the Bull

But in the Berlin fragment of Euripides' Cretans Pasiphae says
to him :

Wherefore if in the deep
Thou art fain to fling me, fling : full well thou knowest
The shambles and the murdering of men.
Or if thou longest to eat this flesh of mine
Raw, thou mayest eat: feast on and take thy fill1.

These words can hardly refer to the Minotaur and his victims.
Or, if they do, what after all is implied by the tradition that the

Fig. 506.

Minotaur devoured youths and maidens ? We have taken him to
be the Cnossian crown-prince masquerading in a solar dance2. He
too, like the Thracian chieftains, may have renewed his magic
powers by tasting of human flesh3.

The memory of such enormities is slow to fade. A sarco-

1 Berliner Klassikertexte Berlin 1907 v. 2. 75 no. 217, 35 ff. irpbs rad' efre irovriav \
pLirrecv doKei aoi, piTrr' • eiriaraaat. 8e roi \ jxialcpov §pya /ecu acpayas. avSpoKrbvovs' \ etr
(bfioafrov rrjs e/bLTjs epas (fiayecv \ crapKos, Trdpeari, /xr] XiirrjS doivibfxevos.

2 Supra p. 490 ff.

3 It may be that the ferocious language of //. 4. 35 f. (Zeus to Hera) Copxiv pe(3pwdoi.s
lIpLap,ou Hpia/j.ot6 re iroudas \ aXXovs re Tp&as, rbre nev xoXop ^aKeaaio, cp. 22. 346 f.,
24. 212 ff., Xen. an. 4. 8. 14, Hell. 3. 3. 6, Philostr. v. A poll. 4. 36 p. 154 Kayser, took
its rise in a grim reality and then, as civilisation increased, passed through the successive
stages of tragic grandiloquence and comic bombast.
 
Annotationen