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)

1154 Appendix M

Again, the buried hero would be responsible for the growth of all living things.
The Sialesi relief shows the snake propitiated by a grown man and a growing
boy—a sufficiently suggestive picture. Moreover, a red-figured amphora from
Basilicata, now in the Naples collection (fig. 968)l, represents two youths, with
himdtia and sticks, standing to right and left of a stele, which marks the grave
of Oidipous. In the background hangs a pair of halteres2, the sign of their
devotion. But the most interesting feature of the design is the inscription on the
stele, a metrical couplet in which the grave apparently (though the speaker is not
named) announces:

Mallows and rooty asphodel upon my back I bear,
And in my bosom Oidipodas, Laios' son and heir3.

Now mallows and asphodel were the common vegetable food of the Boeotian
peasant, as we learn from a famous passage of Hesiod4. We may therefore
reasonably regard this vase-painting as an illustration of the Boeotian Oidi-podeion.
And the more so, if—as seems probable—the dialect of the inscription contains
sundry would-be Boeotisms5.

It appears, then, that Oidipous in his grave played a part not easily
distinguishable from that of Zeus Meilichios6. There is, I think, that much of
truth in a venturesome view advanced by O. Hofer, who after an exhaustive
study of the hero's myth and monuments comes to the tentative conclusion that
Oidipous after all may be but a hypostasis of the chthonian Zeus7. Sophokles
knew what he was about in making the old king summoned hence by the

tische Bezeichnungen des schwarzen geschwollenen Schlangenleibes sein, welcher diesen
Heroen natiirlich genomraen wurde, als sie zu Helden der Dichtung wurden?'

1 Heydemann Vasensamml. Neapel p. 415 f. no. 2868 pi. 7, B. Quaranta in the Real
Museo Borbonico Napoli 1833 ix pi. 28, J. Millingen Ancient Unedited Monuments Series li
London 1826 p. 86 ff. pi. 36, Inghirami Vas. Jitt. iv. 18 ff. pi. 315. Fig. 968 is copied
from Millingen's coloured plate and Heydemann's facsimile of the inscription.

2 Heydemann loc. cit. says 'ein Ball.'

3 vlotui < fxeu > /j.o\&xvv Te KaL do<pbb~o\ov irdhvpi^ov | koXttui 5' OiSinbdav Aatov <v>ibv
(Cougny Anth. Pal. Append. 2. 120). A. Boeckh in the Corp. inscr. Gr. iv no. 8429

quotes Eustath. in Od. p. 1698, 25 ff. ecpvTedero ev tols rdcpois to tolovtov rpvTov [sc. 6
acr<p68e\os), tos 8t]\ol /ecu n tujv rrapd ru> Ylopcpvp'up eiriypap.pdruv \eyov us dirb tivos rdcpov
otl v<!qt<^ jxev fj.a\dxvv *cu do~<pb8e\ov iroKvpifov, KoXirip Se rbv beivo. e^w and surmises
that Porphyrios found the epigram in the Aristotelian piplos (see Eustath. in II. p. 285,
24 f.)—a view already put forward by Jahn Vasensamml. Munchen p. cxxiv n. 914.
Boeckh loc. cit. further cp. Auson. epitaph. 21. r f. (p. 79 Peiper) Hippothoum Pyleumque
tenet gremio infima tellus: | caulibus et malvis terga superna virent, whence E. Curtius
would read 'ItnrbOobv t rjSe IlvXaiov for rbv delva in Eustath. loc. cit.

4 Hes. o.d. 41 with K. W. Goettling—J. Flach ad loc. and H. G. Evelyn White in
the Class. Quart. 1920 xiv. 128 f.

5 ptoXaxyv for pa\dxvv, dacpodoXov for dcrcpbbeKov, Ol5nr68ai> for OISlttoStiv, if not also (as
Dr P. Giles suggests to me), Actfo = Aaf« for Aatov. J. Millingen loc. cit. p. 87 n. 5 says
'according to the ^Eolic dialect'; P. Kretschmer op. cit. p. 224f., ' in attischem Dialekt,'
regarding p.o\dxr]v as a blend of p-akaxw and p.o\6xv (Athen. 58 d), dcrcpbdoKov as a case of
vulgar assimilation. Decernantperitiores.

6 Cp. Inscr. Gr. sept, ii no. 1329 an inscription in lettering of s. ii b.C. found at Akketsi
near Thebes Avaip.axo[s] | MeiXt%t'ot?.

7 O. Hofer in Roscher lex. Myth. iii. 743 '1st Oidipus vielleicht eine Hypostase des
Zei)s x^ovlos?' This suggestion should not be tossed on one side till the evidence adduced
ib. p. 741 ff. has been carefully weighed.