Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 2,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (thunder and lightning): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1925)

692 The axes of Penelope

most suggestive Studies in the Odyssey maintains that Penelope, like
Artemis StymphaUd1, was a local Arcadian kore in the shape of a
water-fowl, and points out that her other titles Arnakta, Arnaia,
Arnea (?) mean 'She of Arne,' the famous spring near Mantineia.
'Penelope,' he says, '...was evidently the divine Penelops of Arne2.'
This is to treat a possibility as a certainty. But the hypothesis itself
is b>v no means absurd3.

In any case the occurrence of a bird-name in connexion with the
episode of the axes donne a penser. It recalls the birds perched on
the axes of the sarcophagus from Hagia Triada*, and the bird on the
axe-cleft tree at Dodona5. S. Wide6, commenting on the complex,
bird, axe, and tree, surmises that the bronze double axe, or rather its
prototype the stone axe, belonged by rights to the bird regarded as
numen of the sacred tree. The woodpecker with his chisel-shaped7
beak was actually called pelekds, pelekdn, spelektos, the 'axe-bird8';
and many another popular name for him all over Europe bears witness
to his reputation as a borer and fashioner of timber9. In this respect
he has for rival the hoopoe, who is described by R. Lydekker as
commonly breeding in hollow trees10 and hammering on the ground
at the production of each note11. D'Arcy W. Thompson13 and Sir
James Frazer13 remark on the parallelism of these two birds in
ancient belief. The myth of Tereus the hoopoe has a doublet in that
of Polytechnos the woodpecker, the former being current on the
western, the latter on the eastern side of the Aegean. Tereus, king

1 K. Wernicke in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. ii. 1398 f., O. Hofer in Roscher Lex.
Myth. iv. 1563.

2 J. A. K. Thomson op. cit. p. 59, cp. ib. p. viii.

3 Farnell Gk. Hero Cults p. 62 scouts it, but without discussion.

4 Supra pp. 518, 520.

5 Supra p. 677.

H S. Wide 'Baum, Vogel und Axt' in the Sertum philologicum Carolo Ferdinando
Johansson oblatum Goteborg 1910 pp. 62—69 with 4 figs. I am indebted to Miss Harrison
for the loan of an offprint of this article.

7 R. Lydekker The Royal Natural History London 1894-95 iii. 551 'The bill in all
the woodpeckers is strong and chisel-shaped, and is thus admirably adapted for hewing
holes, and prising off bark to capture insects.'

8 D'Arcy W. Thompson A Glossary of Greek Birds Oxford 1895 pp. 136, 157.

9 Extensive collections of woodpecker-names will be found in J. Rendel Harris
Boanerges Cambridge 1913 pp. 330 ff. ('Woodpecker place- and person-names'), 4i6f.
('Names of the Woodpecker'), id. Picus who is also Zeus Cambridge 1916 pp. 17 ff. ('The
Woodpecker in the British Isles'), 37 ff. ('The popular names of the Woodpecker'), R.
Riegler ' Spechtnamen' in the Zeitschrift des Vereins ficr Volkskunde 1913 xxiii. 265—277.

10 R. Lydekker The Royal Natural History London 1895 iv. 57.

11 Ib. ib. iv. 59.

12 D'Arcy W. Thompson A Glossary of Greek Birds Oxford 1895 pp. 52, 56 f., Class.
Rev. 1904 xviii. 80.

13 Frazer Golden Bough2: Balder the Beautiful ii. 70 n. 2.