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

77^

The Dioskouroi as Stars

attracted the attention of the Greeks as early as the sixth century
B.C.; for Xenophanes (c. 576—480) offered a physical explanation
of it1. It is first expressly referred to the Dioskouroi by Seneca
the philosopher, who says :

' In a big storm stars as it were are wont to appear sitting on the sail. Men
believe that then in their peril they are being succoured by the divine power of
Pollux and Castor. They therefore take heart again, for it is already clear to
them that the storm is weakening and the winds dropping : otherwise the fires
would be borne about and not stationary2.'

Many other authors of the imperial age mention the stars of the
Dioskouroi as appearing on the rigging of ships at sea3. Occa-
sionally the apparition was ascribed to a different source: Polemon,
like Diodoros4, seems to have spoken of the Kabeiroi in this con-
nexion5, and Arrian says that off the island of Achilles in the
Euxine sea Achilles was seen on the mast or on the tip of the yard
in place of the Dioskouroi6.

vii. The Stars of the Dioskouroi and of Helene as a

good or bad omen.

Different opinions were entertained with regard to the propitious
or unpropitious nature of these signs. Euripides treated Kastor,
Polydeukes, and Helene as alike beneficent powers7. But a gradual
change seems to have come over classical beliefs in this respect.

and a yard-arm. Mr Bullen says : ' St. Elmo's Fire...often covers like a halo the head of
a seaman engaged in work aloft, and I myself have several times seen it streaming from
my fingers when holding them up for the purpose. I cannot help confessing to a curious
feeling of the uncanny on witnessing this phenomenon....Only appearing on the blackest
of nights, moving from point to point without apparently passing through the intermediate
space, unaffected by fiercest wind or heaviest rain, and insusceptible of being touched or
moved, St Elmo's Fires form what is probably the most mysterious and lovely of all the
wonderful phenomena belonging to the ocean.' Sir J. J. Thomson informs me (Sept. 22,
1913) that one night in stormy weather he saw St Elmo's fires glimmering on the topmost
points of King's College Chapel, Cambridge.

1 Aet. 2. 18. 1 ^evocpdvrjs roiis eiri t&v ir\olwv (paivopievovs oTov darepas, ovs Kai
AioaKoupovs KaXovai rives, ve<pe\ia elvai Kara tt]v irocdv Kiv-qviv irapaXafMirovTa —Flout,
de plac. phil. 2. 18. 1.

2 Sen. nat. quaestt. 1. 1. 13.

'! E.g. Plin. nat. hist. 2. 101, Loukian. navig. 9, dial. deor. 26. 2, Charid. 3, de
mercede conductis 1, Max. Tyr. 15. 7, Lyd. de ostent. 5. To the list given by T. H.
Martin ' La foudre et le feu Saint-Elme' in the Revue archtologique 1866 N.S. xiii. 168 ff.
K. Jaisle op. cit. p. 12 adds the papyrus romance published by J. P. Mahaffy in the
Rendiconti d. Lincei 1897 Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche (Serie Quinta)
vi. 93.

4 Supra p. 765 f.

5 Polemonfrag. 76a {Frag. hist. Gr. iii. 137 Midler) ap. schol. Eur. Or. 1637.
K Arrian. peripl. pont. Eux. 34 (Geogr. Gr. tnin. i. 399 Muller).

7 Supra p. 763 f.