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)

The Tritopatores or Tritopatreis 119

Delos1 and there set up the first wooden statue of Apollon2. On
this showing the circular structure found by Leroux would be in the
nature of a Delian family herdonz. Immediately to the south of it
are the remains of a Byzantine church. Was this another case of
the pagan Tritopatores being replaced by the Christian Trinity?

Putting together these various indications of popular worship,
we perceive that the Tritopatores from the fifth century onwards
had been established at the cross-roads (Kerameikos, Delos), where
a hypaethral enclosure, either trapezoidal (Kerameikos) or circular
in plan (Delos), was set apart for them in a roughly triangular
space. The cult there carried on might be limited to members of
a particular clan (the Zakyadai at Athens, the Pyrrhakidai in Delos)
and involved the sacrifice of sheep etc. (Marathon, Delos). In some
respects, therefore, the Greek Tritopatores recall the Lares
Compitales, who were likewise worshipped at the cross-roads—that
immemorial rendez-vous of family-ghosts4. This disposes us to see
in the former, as in the latter5, ancestral spirits watchful over the
welfare of their descendants.

Literary evidence with regard to the nature of the Tritopatores
follows two lines of tradition, one supporting, the other supple-
menting, the inferences drawn from the monuments.

1 Phanodemos/ra^. i (Frag. hist. Gr. i. 366 Miiller) ap. Athen. 392 D.
Plout. ap. Euseb.praep. ev. 3. 8. I.

3 P. Roussel in the Bull. Corr. Hell. 1929 liii. 177: 'D'apres les observations faites
par G. Leroux, un culte etait celebrd depuis longtemps sur l'emplacement ou s'eleva le
monument du Tritopator. Tout le quartier a i\k si profondement remanie jusqu'a la
basse epoque romaine qu'il est difficile de determiner l'aspect qu'il pouvait presenter au
V° siecle ou precedemment; mais l'hypothese n'est point exclue qu'il ait jadis fait partie
d'une vaste necropole dont on a retrouve des traces, d'une part dans la region a l'Ouest
de la partie septentrionale de la rue du Theatre, d'autre part dans la partie Sud-Est du
sanctuaire meme d'Apollon, pres de l'autel de Zeus Polieus. On imaginerait volontiers
que les Pyrrhakidai eurent la tombe reelle ou fictive d'un ancetre en cette region et qu'au
moment de la purification de 426, on y substitua le monument d'un culte heroi'que.'

Id. De'los colonie atlUnienne Paris 1916 p. 158 n: 5 had already commented on the fact
that a similar structure, discovered in 1912 to the south of the lower reservoir of the
Inopos, was dedicated to the Si/upai UvppaKibwv. In the Bull. Corr. Hell. 1929 liii. 171 ff.
he adds fig. 5 plan, fig. 6 inscription, and fig. 7 restoration of this second monument.

4 See J. A. MacCulloch 'Cross-roads' in J. Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and
Ethics Edinburgh 1911 iv. 330b—335b, R. Wtinsch 'Cross-roads (Roman)' ib. 335 b—
336 b, K. F. Smith 'Hecate's suppers' tb. Edinburgh 1913 vi. 565 a—567 a, Schrader
Reallex? p. 335.

6 Supra ii. 1159 witl1 n. 1. See further E. Samter Familienfeste der Griechen una
Romtr Berlin 1901 p. 105 ff., id. 'Der Ursprung des Larenkultes' in the Archiv/. Kel.
1907 x. 368-392, A. von Domaszewski ii. 1907 x. 336 f. ( = id. Abhandlungen zur
romischen Religion Leipzig und Berlin 1909 p. I74f.), Miss M. C. Waites 'The nature of
'he Lares and their representation in Roman art' in the Am. Journ. Arch. 1920 xxiv.
241—261.