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

Orphic Theogonies and Cosmogonic Eros 104 7

them with those of Zeus in a pantheistic scheme (fig. 898 = Furtwangler Ant.
Gemmen i pi. 43, 61, ii. 210). In short, Eros plants his foot upon the world
(C. O. Miiller Denkmaler der alten Kunst Gottingen 1835 ii. 3. 13 pi. 51, 633,
Furtwangler Geschnitt. Steine Berlin p. 276 no. 7440 pi. 55 flat cornelian of
imperial date. The motif occurs also in sculpture : see A. de Ridder Les bronzes
antiques du Louvre Paris 1913 i. 87 no. 6i3 = Reinach Rep. Stat. ii. 446 no. 7,
Von Sacken Ant. Bronzen Wien pi. 14, i = Reinach Rep. Stat. .ii. 447 no. 1,
L. Urlichs in the Bonner Jahrbiicher 1846 ix. 155 pi. 5, 4 = Reinach Rep. Stat. ii.
431 no. 4), or takes his seat thereon (fig. 899= Furtwangler Ant. Gemmen i pi. 30,
37, ii. 149), or with a mighty effort carries the globe as if it were a mere ball

Fig. 898. Fig. 899. Fig. 900.

(fig. 900 = Furtwangler Geschnitt. Steine Berlin p. 160 no. 3722 pi. 29 black paste
with bluish band). We are meant to draw the moral : omnia vincit Amor; et
nos cedamus Amort (Verg. eel. 10. 69). Psyche is no match for the matchless one.
Of countless illustrations I give but two : a convex banded agate in my daughter's
possession shows Eros with one foot raised on a step in hot pursuit of a butterfly,
the animal form of Psyche (fig. 901); and a flat cornelian in my own collection
portrays him riding her round a race-course, the goals of which are marked by
her butterfly and his weapons respectively (fig. 902). Such allegories, not to say
' sermons in stones,' were keenly relished in the early imperial age. If Eros thus
masters the human soul, he enters into all the pleasures and pains of man. Some-
times he is represented as a veritable fay, doing the deeds of mortals with more

Fig. 901. Fig. 902.

than mortal skill. Thus, like ' the merry Grecian coaster' he sails the blue waters
of the Mediterranean, but his boat is nothing more than a wine-jar—no wonder
he bears the palm (fig. 903 = T. Cades op. cit. ima Classe, A 6, 57, C. O. Miiller
Denkmaler der alten Kunst Gottingen 1835 ii. 3. 23 f. pi. 55, 702 a cornelian in
the Poniatowski collection), or even a murex—a cockleshell, as we might say
(fig. 904 = T. Cades op. cit. ima Classe, A 6, 59 of unknown provenance). Some-
times, again, Erotes and Psychai play the part of ordinary men and women with
no trace of divinity beyond the tell-tale wings of bird or butterfly or beetle and
a certain exquisite grace that idealizes all—witness a wonderful band of decoration
below the main panels on the wall of a dining-room in the house of the Vettii,
which pictures Erotes and Psychai as twining garlands, making oil, coining