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

Conclusions

779

the supporters of its throne1. Obviously the Heliopolitan and the
Hierapolitan gods were near relatives ; and kindred deities flanked
by a pair of recumbent bulls occur on the coinage of other Syrian
towns2. Again, Zeus Dolichaios, better known as Iupiter Doli-
clienus, the god of Doliche in Kommagene3, appears to have
borrowed the bull on which he habitually stands from Tesub, who
on Hittite monuments has a bull either at his side or beneath his
feet4. On this showing it is possible, and even probable, that both
Iupiter Heliopolitanus and Iupiter Dolichenus have preserved to us
essential features of the Hittite father-god.

The discussion of the foregoing cults served to bring out a
certain analogy subsisting between the ram and the bull in Levan-
tine religion5. These two beasts had been treated from time
immemorial as embodiments of procreative power, the former by
a pastoral, the latter by a cattle-breeding population. As such
they were associated in primis with the fertilising sky-god6; and I
have suggested that the victims sacrificed to Zeus were commonly
either oxen or rams just because these animals more than others7
were charged with Zeugungskraft and would therefore be thought
to increase the power of the god to fertilise and bless8.

Indeed, it may be claimed that throughout the present volume
this conception of Zeus as a procreative god has come gradually
into greater prominence. From first to last he was worshipped as
a Father: and the invocation Zeu pater, familiar to us from the
Homeric poems, became stereotyped on Italian soil as the name
Iupiter9.

Two other results of general significance have emerged from
the mass of detail considered in this book. Zeus as sky-father is
in essential relation to an earth-mother. Her name varies from
place to place and from time to time. Sometimes she is a
mountain-goddess with little or no disguise—Mousa10, Koryphe,
Aitne, Kyllene, Taygete, or the like11. Sometimes she is an earth-
goddess that has developed into a vegetation-goddess—Demeter,

1 Supra pp. 583 f., 586.

2 Supra p. 590. 3 Supra pp. 604—633.
4 Supra pp. 604—606, 639—644. 5 Supra p. 430.

8 Supra pp. 428—430, 633—635.

7 Yet in Crete [supra pp. 401, 501) and in Karia etc. [supra p. 717 n. 3) Zeus was
associated with the goat, as was Dionysos in Lakonike, at Metapontum, etc. {supra
pp. 674 f., 705)—doubtless for the same reason.

8 Supra p. 716 ff.

9 Supra p. 14. Geographically intermediate between the Greek Zei)s irar-qp and the
Latin Diespiter is the Stymphaean Aenrdrvpos [supra p. 681 n. 4).

10 Supra pp. 104—106. 11 Supra pp. 154—157.