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)

852 Retrospect

Zeus as god of Thunder had a wide vogue in the north-western
parts of Asia Minor. He bore the title of Brontaios in the Kyzikos
district1, that of Bronton in northern and eastern Phrygia2. As
Brontdn, if not also as Brontaios, he was served with mystic rites
in a cave, being a divinity akin to Zagreus or Dionysos, whose
appellative Bromios seems to have meant ' god of the roaring
Thunder3.' We gather that in Phrygia, as in Crete, the worshipper,
seated on the rocky throne of his god, himself imitated the thunders
of the reborn Zeus. Cretan timbrel and Phrygian lyre had between
them transformed the thunder into something strangely like music4.

* *
*

And here we pause. It might have been supposed that the
religion of Zeus, a god of Thunder and Lightning, would be through-
out a religion of terror. It was not so. The populace, taught by the
playwrights, was vaguely conscious that above the shifting scenes
of human life somewhere and somehow Zeus sat enthroned to mete
out justice with impartial balance. If he used his thunderbolt, it
would be to punish the proud and to lay their towering ambitions
in the dust. The philosophers with clearer insight perceived that
Zeus must be all or nought. Most of them, amid much diversity
of detail, grasped the same essential fact that there is a Power
Supreme, which in every place and at every moment is engaged
on the godlike task of turning chaos into cosmos. Not a few of
them—Pherekydes5, Herakleitose, Empedokles7, Platon8, the Stoics9
—spoke of It, spoke of Him, as Zeus. And to these the thunderbolt
was but a symbol of his omnipotence.

It would be easy to parade both the popular and the philosophic
view by marshalling an array of quotations. I choose rather to ex-
emplify each by a single characteristic product—on the one hand
a picture, on the other a poem.

The Dareios-vase is an Apulian krateroi magnificent proportions,
found at Canusium iCanosci) in 1851 and now preserved in the
Museum at Naples10. Its principal design (pi. xxxviii)11 represents
the tragic downfall of the Great King, as the result of his pre-
sumptuous invasion of Greece. Two and twenty figures are disposed

I Supra p. 833 ft". 2 Supra p. 835 ft". 3 Supra p. 838 n. 7. 4 Supra p. 839.
5 Supra i. 27 f., ii. 315 f. G Supra i. 28 ft., ii. 12. 7 Supra i. 31 f.
8 Supra i. 311, ii. 43 f., 63 n. o, 100. 9 Supra i. 29 ft.
10 Heydemann Vasensatnml. Neapel p. 571 ft. no. 3253. Height 1.30™; girth 1.93'".

II II. Heydemann in the Ann. d. Inst. 1873 xlv. 22 ft", pis. B—C, D, Mon. d. lust, ix
pis. 50—51, 52, Reinach Rep. Vases i. 194, 195, 1, 330, 1, 2, A. Conze in the Wien.
Vorlegebl. vii pis. 6a, 6b, A. Baumeister in his Denkm. i. 408 ff. fig. 449, Furtwangler—
Reichhold Gr. Vasen/na/erei ii. 142 ft. pi. 88 (=mypl. xxxviii).