DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14696#0779
704 The spear of Zeus
is sometimes increased by the addition of a sort of prayer. Thus near
Dinan as late as the year 1880 many people would carry a thunder-
stone in their pocket during stormy weather and, if thunder were
heard, would say:
Pierre, pierre,
Garde-moi du tonnerre.
Sebillot shows further that this role of acting as a lightning-rod
passed from the neolithic celt to the iron axe:
Among the Basques, when a storm bursts, the best preservative is to place
some cutting instrument, axe or scythe, outside the house with its edge turned
to the sky. Peasants on the farms near Beuvray in Saone-et-Loire, as soon as
they hear the first rumblings of thunder and feel the first drops of rain, bring out
into the yard and set up near the threshold of their house an iron axe, with its
handle against the ground and its blade uppermost, to preserve the place from
lightning and hail. This custom is half-Christianised in the district of Saint-
Gaudens in Haute-Garonne, where an iron axe, blade in air, is put in a plate
containing holy water1.
We come back, then, at length to the point from which we started2,
viz. the primitive belief that the thunderbolt falls in the form of an
axe. By an axe therefore, according to the homoeopathic principle
of early thought, it must be averted.
ii. The spear of Zeus.
Lightning was sometimes, though not often, regarded by the
ancient Greeks as the spear of Zeus. Pindar, ever on the look out
for an effective epithet, coined a fine sonorous compound enchei-
keraunos to describe Zeus,'whose spear is the lightning3.' Bakchylides
has the rival formation keraunenches; Zeus 'whose lightning is his
spear4.' Aristophanes greets the lightning as
Immortal fiery spear of Zeus5,
and an Apolline oracle quoted by Eusebios from Porphyrios calls
it the
descending spear of Zeus".
1 P. Sebillot Lc Folk-Lore de France Paris 1904 i. 104 f. Cp. Geopon. 7. 11 (Zoro-
astres) cridripos roh wib/nacri twv irlduiv iiriTidtfievos dwepijKei tj\v dirb tCcv j3povrwv xai
dcrTpawQu /3\df3r)v.
2 Supra p. 505.
3 Pind. 01. 13. 77 Tnjvbs eyxeiKepavvov with schol., Pyth. 4. 194 irarip OvpaviBdv
iyxeiKepawov Zfjva with schol., Eustath. in II. p. 839, 9 fF. oiJrw kcu 6 Zeus vvv fyei
aTepoTrrjv fierd x€P<7t (-^ rl- xadd kclL tl (3e\os- c3 \6yij} Kai iyxeLK^Pavvov clvtov 77
XvptKT] Movcra /caXet, ws ola /cat dopari xP^y-tvov ai)r<j), Kada 5r]\oi /cat 6 cppdaas on ivayKOi-
veirai 6 Zeus Kepavvbv (lis eV crx^art aix^Tod iroXepLTjcrelovTos. Infra p. 705 n. 4.
4 Bakchyl. 7. 48 Jebb w ZeO xepaweyxi's.
5 Aristoph. av. 1750 f. cJ fxiya xp^creov dtTTepoiTrjs (pdos, | u> Atos iLfijipoTov Zyxos
wvpfpbpov, I k.t.X.
6 Porph. ap. Euseb. praep. ev. 6. 3. 1 (Cougny A nth. Pal. Append. 6. 146. 12) cited
supra p. 14 n. 11.
is sometimes increased by the addition of a sort of prayer. Thus near
Dinan as late as the year 1880 many people would carry a thunder-
stone in their pocket during stormy weather and, if thunder were
heard, would say:
Pierre, pierre,
Garde-moi du tonnerre.
Sebillot shows further that this role of acting as a lightning-rod
passed from the neolithic celt to the iron axe:
Among the Basques, when a storm bursts, the best preservative is to place
some cutting instrument, axe or scythe, outside the house with its edge turned
to the sky. Peasants on the farms near Beuvray in Saone-et-Loire, as soon as
they hear the first rumblings of thunder and feel the first drops of rain, bring out
into the yard and set up near the threshold of their house an iron axe, with its
handle against the ground and its blade uppermost, to preserve the place from
lightning and hail. This custom is half-Christianised in the district of Saint-
Gaudens in Haute-Garonne, where an iron axe, blade in air, is put in a plate
containing holy water1.
We come back, then, at length to the point from which we started2,
viz. the primitive belief that the thunderbolt falls in the form of an
axe. By an axe therefore, according to the homoeopathic principle
of early thought, it must be averted.
ii. The spear of Zeus.
Lightning was sometimes, though not often, regarded by the
ancient Greeks as the spear of Zeus. Pindar, ever on the look out
for an effective epithet, coined a fine sonorous compound enchei-
keraunos to describe Zeus,'whose spear is the lightning3.' Bakchylides
has the rival formation keraunenches; Zeus 'whose lightning is his
spear4.' Aristophanes greets the lightning as
Immortal fiery spear of Zeus5,
and an Apolline oracle quoted by Eusebios from Porphyrios calls
it the
descending spear of Zeus".
1 P. Sebillot Lc Folk-Lore de France Paris 1904 i. 104 f. Cp. Geopon. 7. 11 (Zoro-
astres) cridripos roh wib/nacri twv irlduiv iiriTidtfievos dwepijKei tj\v dirb tCcv j3povrwv xai
dcrTpawQu /3\df3r)v.
2 Supra p. 505.
3 Pind. 01. 13. 77 Tnjvbs eyxeiKepavvov with schol., Pyth. 4. 194 irarip OvpaviBdv
iyxeiKepawov Zfjva with schol., Eustath. in II. p. 839, 9 fF. oiJrw kcu 6 Zeus vvv fyei
aTepoTrrjv fierd x€P<7t (-^ rl- xadd kclL tl (3e\os- c3 \6yij} Kai iyxeLK^Pavvov clvtov 77
XvptKT] Movcra /caXet, ws ola /cat dopari xP^y-tvov ai)r<j), Kada 5r]\oi /cat 6 cppdaas on ivayKOi-
veirai 6 Zeus Kepavvbv (lis eV crx^art aix^Tod iroXepLTjcrelovTos. Infra p. 705 n. 4.
4 Bakchyl. 7. 48 Jebb w ZeO xepaweyxi's.
5 Aristoph. av. 1750 f. cJ fxiya xp^creov dtTTepoiTrjs (pdos, | u> Atos iLfijipoTov Zyxos
wvpfpbpov, I k.t.X.
6 Porph. ap. Euseb. praep. ev. 6. 3. 1 (Cougny A nth. Pal. Append. 6. 146. 12) cited
supra p. 14 n. 11.