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)

The whip of Zeus

825

Crushed in his head with his avenging scourge,
What time Night's daughters1 armed with fell desire
The father's brothers2 to shed brother's blood.

The scholiast3, commenting on Lykophron's word ' scourge,' re-
marks simply : ' he means " with his thunderbolt." '

Oppian4 (c. 170 A.D.) describes a storm at sea in similar terms :

Beneath the scourge of Zeus etherial fire
Strikes the sea-farer's keel, and the burning stroke
Devours it, while the sea blent with dread flames
Still higher tosses and still onward drives.

Again the scholiast5 observes : ' " scourge," that is, " thunderbolt." '
Now learned poets of the Hellenistic age would hardly have
ventured upon such a locution, unless they had (or fancied they
had) some warrant for it in earlier Hellenic poetry. Accordingly
we find Hesychios noting the Homeric phrase ' by the scourge of
Zeus' and carefully explaining that this means ' by the thunder-
bolt6.' Unfortunately his explanation is wrong. The phrase occurs
twice in the Iliad, and in neither passage is there the least allusion
to a thunderstorm7. The fact is, Homer's language was already
old, and this particular expression even in his day had lost much of
its original force. 'The scourge of Zeus,' scholiasts8 and lexico-
graphers9 notwithstanding, was the merest metaphor for the driving
power of the god. For all that, the phrase must have arisen at a
time (? Early Iron Age) and in a place (? Thessaly) when and
where Zeus was conceived as the driver of a celestial chariot. His
cracking whip made the lightning; his echoing wheels, the thunder.
Salmoneus, who during the Early Iron Age came from Thessaly to
Elis10, was an adept at the self-same art.

A vague remembrance of Zeus the charioteer with his lightning-
lash clings about the tradition of his primeval contests. In repre-
sentations of the Gigantomachy we frequently see him fulminant
on a four-horse chariot11. More than that, his lightning-lash was not

1 The Furies.

2 Eteokles and Polyneikes, both sons and brothers of Oidipous.

3 Schol. Lyk. AU j^^ — et. mag. p. 10, 2 \eyei de tl} Kepawu).

4 Opp. de pise. 5. 282 ff. ws d£ Aids p.d,<TTiyi Xa/3g rpoTTiv aidepiov nvp \ k.t.X.
0 Schol. Opp. de pise. 5. 282 pLaariyi' Kepavvos.

6 Hesych. s.v. Aids p-dariyi' tu> KepavvQ.

' II. 12. 37 f. 'Apyuoi 5e Aids fidariyi bafxevres | vrjvaiv eiri yXcupvprjaiv eeXfx^uoi
iVxavdwro, 13. 811 f. ov tol tl p-dxTi dScifJjUopes eip,ev, | dXXa Atos fxaariyL kolkt] eod.jx-qp.ev

8 Schol. A.D. 77. [2. 37 Atos 8£ fxaari^ 6 Kepavvos, schol. T. ib. rtJ Kepawu).

9 Hesych. loc. eit. J. Alberti ad he. cites 'Gloss. Rutgers. Mdcrrtf. Kepavpos.'

10 Apollod. 1. 9. 7, cp. Strab. 356.

11 E.g. supra p. 82 fig. 44, p. 84 fig. 46, p. 778 fig. 741.

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