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)

2 Zeus and the Earthquakes

in this land hardly a week, in many years hardly a day, goes by
without the ground being noticeably shaken at one point or another,
while a second eminent geographer, A. Philippson1, puts it even
more forcibly: 'In Greece the soil trembles somewhere almost every
day.'

Greek earthquakes, being tectonic, not volcanic, in character,
occur normally along certain well-marked structural lines, which
correspond with prominent features of the country—the base of a
mountain-range, a straight river-valley, a rocky coast-line2. These
seismic zones may be enumerated as follows: the northern half of
the Straits of Euboia together with the Malian Gulf and the islands
Skiathos and Skopelos; an elliptical land-tract including Phokis,
Lokris, and Boiotia; the northern coast of the Peloponnese from
Corinth to Patrai; the western coast of the Peloponnese with
Zakynthos, Kephallenia, and Leukas ; the valleys that form the
heads of the Messenian, Laconian, and Argolic Gulfs—the principal
southerly indentations of the Peloponnese3. The distribution thus
indicated for modern times is fully borne out by the record of
ancient earthquakes, of which a well-arranged and critical list for
the period 600 B.C.—600 A.D. has been drawn up by W. Capelle4.

Since most of the seismic lines traceable in Greece are definitely
maritime and the rest within easy reach of the sea, it is not sur-
prising to find that the Greeks of the classical age commonly5

1 A. Philippson Das Mittelmeergebiet, seine geographische und kulturelle Eigcuart
Leipzig 1904 p. 28.

2 W. H. Hobbs Earthquakes New York 1907 p. 32.

3 A. Philippson Der Peloponnes. Versuch einer Landeskunde auj'geologischer Gruudlage
Berlin 1892 p. 437 ff. (fig. 41 chart of Messenian earthquake of Aug. 27, 1886), id. Das
Mittelmeergebiet etc. p. 28 f., F. de Montessus de Ballore Les tremblements de terre:
Geographic sUsmologique Paris 1906 p. 267 ff. (fig. 40 seismic map of Greece), W. Capelle
'Erdbeben im Aitertum' in the Neue Jahrb. f. Mass. Altertum 1908 xxi. 604 f., id. in
Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. Suppl. iv. 345.

4 W. Capelle in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. Suppl. iv. 346—358.

5 Not invariably. Pythagoras taught that earthquakes were due to a concourse
(conflict?) of the dead (Ail. var. hist. 4. 19 koX rbv aeiajj-bv i^tveaXb^ei ovSiv &X\o dvai
ij ffiivoSov tSiv reSveunav = H. Diels Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker3 Berlin 1912 i. 357,
11 f.)_presumably a folk-belief (Gruppe Gr. Myth. Rel. p. 814 n. 2).

The frequent notion that earthquake-shocks are occasioned by the movements of a
subterranean monster or giant or god (J. Grimm Teutonic Mythology trans. J. S. Stally-
brass London 1883 ii. 816 f., 1888 iv. 1542, E. B. Tylor Primitive Culture* London
1891 i. 364ff., Frazer Golden Bough*: Adonis Attis Osiris3 i. 197 ff. ('The Earthquake
God'), K. Weinhold 'Die Sagen von Loki' in the Zeitschrift fiir deutsches Alterthum
1849 vii. 61 f., P. Sebillot Le Folk-Lore de France Paris 1904 i. 423 f., F. Legge Fore-
runners and Rivals of Christianity Cambridge 1915 ii. 297 (citing F. Cumont Recherches
sur le manichHsme i La cosmogonie mahichienne d'apres Theodore bar LChdni Bruxelles
1908 Append, ii), P. Alfaric Les (critures manichiennes Paris 1918 i. 40) is found also