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)

Thunder as a sound uttered by Zeus 829

which has dropped inside a willow-tree, all blackened by lightning.
She lowers him into the hollow trunk, where he finds nothing but
snakes, and refuses to draw him up :

' " Now thou art in, my pretty youth, forth shalt thou come, ah, never !
For I'm the Lamia of the Sea, devourer of the Heroes ! "
"And I, I am the Lightning's Son, I'll lighten, and will burn thee ! "
She of the Lightning was afraid, and up again she drew him1.'

Even more suggestive of a Sondergott is the question put to
Mr J. C. Lawson by an aged crone, who was rain-making on the
edge of the cliff in Thera (Santorini). She knew ' the god above
and the god below,' but ' One thing she could not make out—-who
was the god that caused the thunder; did I know?2'

(b) Thunder as a sound uttered by Zeus.

Usually, however, thunder was brought into some direct con-
nexion with Zeus. The modern mind, steeped in Semitic thought3,
readily conceives thunder as the voice of God4. But this was not a
classical conception. Thunder was at most an ominous sound pre-
ceding divine speech. Thus, when Oidipous the aged wanderer
of the Sophoclean play is about to be translated, Zeus ChtJwnios
thunders ; after which there is silence for a while, and then the god
cries in ringing tones :

Oidipous, Oidipous, why tarry we

To go ? Too long already they delay5 !

Phaedrus also, describing a scene on the Roman stage, says :

The curtain dropped, the thunder was rolled down,
And the gods spoke as they are wont to speak0.

But, though the Greeks of the classical age did not regard thunder
as the articulate voice of Zeus, they thought of it sometimes in a
more homely fashion as an inarticulate sound proceeding from his
body7.

1 L. M. J. Garnett—J. S. Stuart-Glennie Greek Folk Poesy London 1896 i. 103 ff. (from
G. Ch. Chasiotes HvXKoyr] rujv Kara tt)v "Yiweipov StjuotlkiIiu aa/jLaruv Athens 1866
p. 137 f.). Cp. N. G. Polites loc. cit. p. io-

2 J. C. Lawson Alodern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion Cambridge 1910
p. 49 f.

a J°b 37- 5 ' God thundereth marvellously with his voice' (cp. id. 37. 4, 40. 9, Ps. 77. 18,
104. 7, John 12. 29, Rev. 10. 3 f., 14. 2, 19. 6). E. B. Tylor Primitive Culture'3, London
1891 ii. 264 : 'Among certain Moslem schismatics, it is even the historical Ali, cousin of
Mohammed, who is enthroned in the clouds, where the thunder is his voice,' etc.

4 E.g. R. Browning An Epistle sub fin. : ' So, through the thunder comes a human
voice,' F. W. H. Myers Saint Paul London 1887 p. 41 ' Lo if some strange intelligible
thunder | Sang to the earth the secret of a star.'

5 Soph. 0. C. 1604 ff. 6 Phaedr. 5. 7. 23 b

7 See the conversation between Strepsiades and Sokrates in Aristoph. nub. 382 ff.,
which is probably based upon folk-belief (cp. Strab. 675, Sen. nat. quaestt. 5. 4. 2).