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)

Zeus and the Earthquakes

21

god. At the close of Aischylos' Prometheus bound the defiant Titan
challenges the Almighty and bids him do his worst:

Let his blast rock the earth, roots and all, from its base1.
And when the answering thunderstorm bursts, the very first symptom
of the wrath of Zeus is an earthquake-shock:

Lo, now in deed and no longer in word
The earth is a-quake2.
Similarly in the brilliant exodos of Aristophanes' Birds Pisthetairos,
who is clearly conceived as the new Zeus3, wields the nether thunders
and thereby causes an earthquake*. The same feeling that the
failure of the solid ground can be ascribed to no power lower than
the highest prompts the Orphic hymn-writer boldly to transfer the
epithet seisickthon, 'who maketh the land to quake,' from Poseidon5
to Zeus6 and the author of a Sibylline oracle to use the like language
°f his supreme Deity7.

The fact is that, as the centuries went by, Poseidon lost while
Zeus gained in religious significance. Earthquakes came to be
connected less and less with the former, more and more with the
latter. A short series of examples will here be instructive. In 464 B.C.
a great earthquake laid waste the town of Sparta: the Spartans
themselves believed that this was because they had once put to death
certain Helot suppliants, who had fled for refuge to the sanctuary
of Poseidon at Cape Tainaros8. In 387 B.C.9 the Spartans under
Agesipolis i were invading the Argolid, when they were overtaken
near Nemea by an alarming earthquake: they at once raised the
Paean to Poseidon, and most of them were for beating a retreat; but
their commander, putting the best construction he could on the
ominous incident, offered sacrifice to that god and pushed on into
the territory of the Argives10. In 373 B.C. Helike and Boura on or

1 Aisch. P.v. 1046 f. 2 Id. ib. 1080 f.

3 I have elaborated the point in Essays and Studies presented to William Ridgeway
Cambridge 19,3 pp. 213—22!, infra p. 59 f.

Aristoph. av. 1750 ff. <J ixiya. xpbazov dffrepo^s 0dos, | w A.is d/xfipoTov eyX"S
■np^bpov (supra ii. 7o+), I i x6bviai p*pvaX^ 6p.ppo<pl>poi 0' afia. ^spovral (supra u. 805

6), I ah S5e vvv x86va I A?a dk irdvra (5.4 <ri ra irdvra codd. P. P. Dobree cj. 5.o

^TTpa. A. Meineke, followed by B. B. Rogers, cj. 5ta 5* irdvra) Kparr,^ | rdpeSpov

5 Supra

6 Orph.i.Z^j.'gf. «I(rt'x0u„, cu^rd, Kaddp^e, wavronv&KTa, | d<rrpd™, fipovra.it,
"pafo.c, 0„riXie ZeO.

I 0racL Sib. 2. 16 ff. Geffcken (cited supra p. 10 n. 1).

Thouk. 1. I28, cp. 1. 101, 3- 54- Paus. 4. 24- 5 f-
M k. Meyer Geschichte des Alterthums Stuttgart—Berlin 1902 v. ■271.
X-en. Hell. 4. ?. + f, p-or the sequel see supra ii. 7.