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

736 Zeus paired with Antiope

actually said to have played the Satyr. The language of Euripides
suggests rather that he courted Antiope in the shape of an ordi-
nary man. A variant tradition, which emphasises the analogy
between Europe and Antiope, makes the latter, like the former^
wooed by Zeus in the form of a bull1. The bull-connexion
reappears in a curious local custom recorded by Pausanias'2.
When the sun was in the sign of Taurus, the Thebans used
to mount guard over the tomb of Zethos and Amphion ; for if
the men of Tithorea in Phokis could at that time steal some
of the earth from the said tomb and place it on the tomb of
Antiope, then the district of Tithorea would be fertile, that of
Thebes barren. The belief was based on the following passage
in the oracles of Bakis :

But whensoe'er to Zethos and Amphion

One of Tithorea's men upon the ground

Shall pour a soothing gift of drink and prayer,

What time the Bull is warmed by the great sun's might,

Then verily beware of no small bane

That comes upon the city; for the fruits

Dwindle within it, when men take of the earth

And to the tomb of Phokos bear the same.

The tomb of Phokos comes in as something of a surprise. We
are expecting the tomb of Antiope. So Pausanias hastens to
explain :

'The wife of Lykos (Dirke) honoured Dionysos above all the gods. There-
fore, when she suffered what tradition says she suffered (being bound to a bull
by Zethos and Amphion and thus dragged to death), Dionysos was wroth with
Antiope. Are not the gods jealous of excessive vengeance ? Antiope, men
say, went mad and bereft of her wits wandered through Hellas till Phokos,
son of Ornytion, son of Sisyphos, fell in with her, healed and married her.
Hence Antiope and Phokos share the same grave 3.;

(J. Overbeck in the Ber. sacks. Gesellsch. d. Wiss. Phil.-hist. Classe 1873 pp. 98, 105
pi. 2). But the Etruscan mirror is, both by H. B. Walters and by E. Gerhard (locc. citt.),
interpreted of Zeus with Semele : it represents Zeus with a crown of lilies {supra p. 622 f.)
on his head and a thunderbolt in his left hand embracing a winged female figure in the
presence of a tailed Satyr with two flutes. The mosaic, which may be dated c. 100 A.D.,
shows (fig. 541) Antiope as a Bacchant with thyrsos and timbrel advancing towards the
left, while Zeus as an ithyphallic Satyr with lagobolon and fawn-skin (?) follows her from
the right. Finally it may be noted that a painting by Correggio in the Louvre (no. 1118)
gives Zeus as a young Satyr discovering Antiope asleep with Eros beside her (H. Schulze
Das weibliche Schdnheitsideal in der Malerei Jena 1912 p. 243 fig. 108, Reinach Rdp.
Peintures iii. 754).

1 Lact. Plac. in Stat. Theb. 7. 189 (Antiope) a Lyco expulsa per Dircen a love in
taurum verso compressa est, unde Zethus et Amphion feruntur progeniti.

2 Paus. Q. 17. 4 ff., cp. Steph. Byz. s.v. TidopaLa, who wrongly places the grave of
Zethos and Amphion at Tithorea: on its real position see Frazer Pausanias v. 57.

3 Paus. 9. 17. 6. At a place in Daulis called Tronis there was a shrine of the hero