Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1940)

PREFACE

VOLUME III with its two Parts comprises the third, and final,
instalment of my work on Zeus: numero deus impare gandet.
It may be thought that a task taken in hand as far back as 1907
ought to have been completed long before 1939. But kindly critics
will remember that the task itself was one of formidable com-
plexity, that the leisure left to a teacher occupied throughout with
College and University duties is necessarily limited, and that the
commotions of our time have hardly been conducive to a peaceful
investigation of the past. This at least I can claim that, year in,
year out, I have steadily pursued the plan originally laid down for
the scope and contents of the book. Volume I was to deal with
Zeus as god of the Bright Sky, Volume II with Zeus as god of the
Dark Sky—an arrangement of essentials approved by the high
authority of Otto Weinreich {Archiv f. Re/. 1937 xxxiv. 138).
Accordingly, Volume I included not only the Hellenic worship
of the Bright Zeus, god of the Upper Sky, but also the Hellenistic
attempts to connect him with Sun, Moon, and Stars, while Volume II
was devoted to the Dark Zeus, god of Thunder and Lightning, in
all his multifarious aspects. Thunder and Lightning proved to be
so wide-spread and far-reaching that much had perforce to be left
over for a third, at first uncontemplated, volume. This concerns
itself with Zeus in his relations to a further series of cosmic phaen-
omena—Earthquakes, Clouds, Wind, Dew, Rain, and Meteorites.
But I need not here enter into a detailed account of sections and
subsections, as I have later endeavoured to trace in sequence the
whole evolution of the cult of Zeus (pages 943 to 973), concluding
with a statement of what I conceive to be its ultimate significance
(PP- 973, 974).

The work as a whole sets out to survey the range and influence
of the Greek Sky-god. It would, I suppose, have been possible to
do this in less discursive fashion by means of tabulated statements
and statistics—a list of his cult-centres, an index of his appellations,
a classified catalogue of his representations in art—in short, to
adopt the dictionary-method, admirably carried out by E. Fehrle,
K. Ziegler, and O. Waser towards the end of Roscher's great
Lexikon (vi. 564—759). But my notion of a survey is somewhat
different. I find a road-map less helpful than an ordnance-sheet.