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

The Dioskouroi as Stars

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this view has been championed by O. Gruppe, who holds that the
Dioskouroi were originally none other than the Heavenly Twins1
and seeks support for his view in the fact that Assyrian mythology
gave to the same constellation the name tuamu rabuti or ' the
Great Twins2.' But, as Dr J. Rendel Harris makes clear, many
features of the Kastor and Polydeukes tradition are of vastly
greater antiquity than the zodiac : ' we are at an earlier date in
human history than star-gazing and star-naming3.'

v. The Dioskouroi identified with various Stars by modern

writers.

F. G. Welcker, comparing the Asvins of the Veda and analogous
pairs of twins found in other Indo-Europaean mythologies, argued
that the Dioskouroi were personifications of the morning-star and
the evening-star regarded as two, not one4. A. Jeremias5 and
H. Winckler6 would equate them with the sun and moon ; O. Gil-
bert, with day and night7. E. Bethe holds that they were not a
definite pair of stars, but any stars that shone out through a rift in
the storm and seemed to promise safety to the mariners in their
distress8. But these conjectures are devoid of ancient support and
must therefore remain at best purely conjectural.

vi. The Dioskouroi identified with Saint Elmo's Fire in

Hellenistic Literature,

In the Hellenistic age, and probably long before that9, the stars
of the Dioskouroi and of their sister Helene were identified with
the electrical discharges ('corposants') that play about the spars of
ships in stormy weather10. This phenomenon is known to have

1 Gruppe Gr. Myth. Rel. pp. 164, 727, id. Myth. Lit. 1908 pp. 56f.,, 480.

2 P. Jensen Die Kosmologie der Babylonier Strassburg 1890 pp. 64 f., 82, cp.
M. Jastrow Die Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens Giessen 1912 ii. 2. 680 n. 1.

3 J. Rendel Harris The Cult of the Heavenly Twins Cambridge 1906 p. 7.

4 Welcker Gr. Gotterl. i. 606 ff.

5 A. Jeremias Das Alte Testament im Lichte des Alten Orients'1 Leipzig 1906 p. 64 ff.

6 H. Winckler Die Weltanschauung des alten Orients {Ex Oriente lux i. r) Leipzig
1905 p. 28.

7 Gilbert Gr. Gotterl. p. 201 ff.

8 E. Bethe in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. v. 1096.

9 Cp. the stars dedicated at Delphoi after the battles of Salamis and Aigos Potamos
{supra p. 761 f.).

10 I have been unable to procure an actual photograph of these electrical lights. But
F. T. Bullen's article on 'St Elmo's Fires' in Marvels of the Universe, published by
Hutchinson and Co., London, pt. 2 p. 63 f. (a reference supplied to me by my nephew
Mr E. N. Cook) has an illustration by A. Twidle showing two such lights on a mast-head

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