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

754 Zeus in Astronomy and Astrology

which Zeus is ringed with the zodiac belong to the period 138—
235 A.D. and to towns that fall within, or border on, the north-west
corner of Asia Minor. Hence we may ascribe them to the far-
reaching influence of Mithraism, which constantly employed the
zodiac as the framework of its ritual reliefs \ Oromasdes, as
F. Cumont points out2, travelled in connexion with the Mithraic
mysteries from east to west, and is seen on Mithraic monuments as
a Roman Iupiter with thunderbolt, sceptre, and eagle. Not im-
probably the coins in question intercept his progress and give us a
glimpse of him as a Greek Zeus. After all, Zeus, Iupiter, and
Oromasdes were essentially kindred figures, whose art-types were
readily blended.

(c) Zeus in Astronomy and Astrology.

Astrology has been defined by A. Bouche-Leclercq as a method
of divination using astronomy as its means3. Accepting this
definition, we may agree with E. Riess that the Greeks were first
definitely influenced by Babylonian and Egyptian astrology to-
wards the end of the fourth century B.C.4, though O. Gruppe has
rightly insisted that astrological notions of a sort are to be found
in Greece long before the age of Alexander the Great—astro-
meteorology already bulks big in Hesiod, and even astrology in the
strict sense of the term is presupposed by Greek mystic teaching
of the sixth century B.C. and by sundry passages of Herakleitos,
Euripides, and Herodotos5.

In the course of the third and following centuries B.C. the
Greeks partly borrowed and partly developed a very complete
series of constellations. Each of these had its own myth or myths
and was, more often than not, said to have been placed in the
sky by Zeus. Thus the Katasterismoi ascribed to Eratosthenes
of Alexandreia (c. 275—195 B.C.) enumerates some thirty-three

1 F. Cumont Textes et monuments figures relatifs aux mysteres de Mithra Bruxelles
1896 i. 109 ff., id. Die Mysterien des Mithra? trans. G. Gehrich Leipzig 1911 p. no, id.
in Daremberg—Saglio Diet. Ant. iii. 1952. Supra p. 516 fig. 389.

2 F. Cumont Textes et monuments figures relatifs aux mysteres de Mithra Bruxelles
18961. 88 ff., 137 ff., id. Die Mysterien des Mithra2 trans. G. Gehrich Leipzig 1911 p. 99 f.,
id. in Roscher Lex. Myth. iii. 1055, id. in Daremberg—Saglio Diet. Ant. iii. 1951.

F. Cumont in the Festschrift fur Otto Benndcrf Wien 1898 p. 294 n. 5 cites for
'Jupiter—Caelus' a gem representing Iupiter with a sceptre seated to the right on an
eagle, his head surrounded by a large nimbus, or [more probably an overarching]
mantle, within which are seven stars (C. Lenormant Nouvelle galerie mythologique
(Tresor de numismatique et de glyptique) Paris 1850 p. 86 no. 14 pi. 13).

3 A. Bouche-Leclercq Vastrologie grecque Paris 1899 p. 70.

4 E. Riess in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. ii. i8iof.

5 Gruppe Gr. Myth. Rel. p. 1588 ff., id. Myth. Lit. 1908 p. 211.