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

77° The Dioskouroi as Stars

The lotus1 and tree not improbably point to a fertility-cult;
and on an isolated mirror (fig. 564)2 the twins have a thunder-
bolt3^) between them, and their amphorae are modified into
vessels from which a stream of water descends to a lotus-bloom
below.

Fig. 564. Fig. 565.

Finally, another variety of type (fig. 565)4 treats the whole
group with much greater freedom, e.g. introducing Leda's swan,
but still retains the side-posts of the ddkana in the form of cippi
and, grotesquely enough, joins head to head by a decorated archi-
trave.

iv. The Dioskouroi identified with the Heavenly Twins

in Hellenistic Literature.

But we have yet to ask, what were the stars with which the
Dioskouroi are associated ?

Eratosthenes, or the pseudo-Eratosthenes, identified them with
the celestial Twins5, as did other writers of a late date6. Recently

1 A lotus-bud is the central ornament of the doicava as figured on a Spartan relief in
M. N. Tod and A. J. B. Wace op. cit. p. 193 no. 588 fig. 68.

2 Gerhard Etr. Spiegel iii. 36 f. pi. 46, 7 (Gerhard's collection).

3 The Ivvdapidcu are sons of Tvvddpews, the 'Shatterer' {infra p. 780 n. 5), an
obvious source of thunder and lightning.

4 Gerhard Etr. Spiegel iii. 39 ff. pi. 48, 2 (Naples?), cp. ib. pi. 48, 1 (Rome, Museo
Gregoriano ?).

5 Pseudo-Eratosth. catast. 10.

6 Hyg.poet. astr. 2. 22, cp. Qv.fast. 5. 693 ff., Serv. in Verg. Aen. 6. \2\.