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)

22 Zeus and the Earthquakes

near the coast of Achaia were swallowed in a single night1 by the
most appalling of all Greek earthquakes: the catastrophe was
attributed to the vengeance of Poseidon, who was angry because the
men of these towns had refused to allow their colonists in Ionia to
carry off or copy their statue of him or even to sacrifice unmolested
on the ancestral altar2. Apameia in Phrygia was repeatedly devas-
tated by earthquakes—a fact which, according to Strabon, explains
the honours granted to Poseidon by that inland city3. But Poseidon
was not the only deity concerned. In the days of Apollonios of
Tyana (s. i A.D.), when the towns on the left side of the Hellespont
were visited by earthquakes, Egyptians and Chaldaeans went about
collecting ten talents to defray the cost of sacrifices to Ge as well
as to Poseidon4. An interesting transitional case is afforded by an
earthquake at Tralleis (s. ii a.d.), which was authoritatively set down
as due to the wrath felt by Zeus for the city's neglect of Poseidon:
the Trallians were ordered to make ample atonement to both gods5.
But when in 115 A.D. Antiocheia on the Orontes was severely shaken,
the survivors of the disaster ignored Poseidon altogether and founded
a temple at Daphne for Zeus Sote'r6. Again, in or about the year
178 A.D. Smyrna was overthrown by an earthquake. P. Aelius
Aristeides7, who was living in the neighbourhood, received divine
injunctions to sacrifice an ox in public to Zeus Soter. At first he
hesitated to do so. But he dreamed that he was standing beside the
altar of Zeus in the market-place and begging for a sign of the god's
approval, when a bright star shot right over the market and confirmed
his intention. He carried through the sacrifice, and from that moment
the dread disturbances ceased. Moreover, five or six days before the
first shock he had been bidden to send and sacrifice at the ancient
hearth adjoining the sanctuary of Zeus Olympios (at Dios Chorion in
Mysia8) and also to set up altars on the crest of the Hill of Atys.
No sooner were these precautions taken than the earthquake came
and spared his estate Laneion, which lay to the south of the Hill9.

Frequently, of course, an earthquake is recorded without explicit
mention of any deity. Neither Poseidon nor Zeus is named as subject
of the vague reverential phrases 'He shook10' or, more often, 'God

1 Herakl. Pont. (Frag. hist. Gr. ii. 200 n. 2 Miiller) ap. Strab. 384.

2 Id. ib. 385, Diod. 15. 49, Paus. 7. 24. 6 with slight divergence in detail.

3 Strab. 579. 4 Philostr. v. Apoll. 6. 41 p. 252 Kayser.

5 Supra ii. 959 n. o. 6 Supra ii. 1191. 7 Supra ii. 127.

8 L. Biirchner in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. xii. 677.

• Aristeid. or. 25. 317 ff. (i. 497 ff. Dindorf).

10 Thouk. 4. 52 ttreiaev, cp. Aristeid. or. 25. 318 (i. 499 Dindorf) irpbrepov ?) auaai rb