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

Zeus and his Lunar Consorts 739

her connexion with Orion1, and to her sons Amphion and Zethos,
the Theban Dioskouroi, whom he believes to be the morning-
star and the evening-star respectively2. This last point is of
very doubtful validity3. Nevertheless the analogy of Kastor and
Polydeukes4 predisposes us to think that Amphion and Zethos
may have stood in some relation to stars. And, if so, we obtain
another illustration of the old-world idea that the stars are the
offspring of a union between the sun and the moon5.

(e) Zeus and his Lunar Consorts.

On a review of the foregoing evidence it appears that Zeus,
who consorted with Selene at Nemea, was elsewhere paired with
a variety of heroines—Antiope, Europe, Io—who sooner or later
acquired lunar characteristics. That the moon should be called
by half a dozen different names in Greece, is by no means sur-'
prising—witness its numerous appellations among the peasants
of modern France6 and Germany7. Observe, too, that the Greek
names for the moon—Pasiphae, Pandia(?), and the like—were
of local, not universal, significance. Athens spoke of Pandia;
Argos and Euboia, of Io; Knossos and Thalamai, of Pasiphae.
Nor was there, except perhaps with Antiope and Europe in
Phokis and Boiotia, any overlapping of lunar names.

What has been said will suffice to establish a further and a
more important contention. The combination of a solar Zeus
with a lunar consort is restricted to certain well-defined areas.
It occurs in Crete and in the eastern half of central Greece, but
hardly anywhere in the rest of the Greek area. This may be
taken to show that Zeus was not essentially the husband of a
lunar bride. His association with her savours rather of non-
Hellenic influence.

One other feature of these myths deserves to be mentioned.
There is in them a decided tendency towards representing Zeus
as a bull and his partner as a cow. The bull Zeus mates with
the cow Io8. Poseidon or Zeus sent, or, as later writers put it,

of the Leukippides by the sons of Aphareus and the Dioskouroi (Gruppe Myth. Lit.
1908 p. 394 f.).

1 P'md. frag. 73 Christ ap. Hyg. poet. astr. 2. 34, Strab. 404.

2 Welcker Gr. Gotterl. i. 614 f.

3 Infra p. 771. 4 Infra p. 760 ff.

5 Supra p. 523 n. 6.

6 P. Sebillot Le Folk-Lore de France Paris 1904 i. 37 ff.

7 J. Grimm Teutonic Mythology trans. J. S. Stallybrass London 1883 ii. 701.

8 Supra p. 438 ff.

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