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 Ourios, ikmeiios, Eucmemos, Boreios 141

there is good reason to think that Aeolian kings (Salmoneus, Keyx,
Ixion, etc.) were at one time regarded as human embodiments of
Zeus1. Indeed, modern mythology is inclined to conjecture that
Aiolos himself began life as an appellative of the same god2. It
would not, therefore, be surprising to find that in saga expanded
from Aeolian lays a favouring wind was deemed the special gift of
Zeus, or that the cult of Zeus as sender of such a wind persistently
clung to the Aeolian coast-line.

In point of fact both expectations are justified. It is often and,
in my opinion, rightly supposed that the Homeric poems were
essentially the dactylic lays of Aeolian Thessaly put together in
hexameter form by a poet or poets who somewhere on the fringe of
Asiatic Aiolis, not improbably at Chios, used an Ionic dialect with
an inevitable admixture of Aeolisms3. Hence Homer, true to Aeolic

terminal cliffs of the Caucasus to the mouths of the Dniester, Dnieper, and Danube ; and
contemporary writers assert that the quantity of snow which fell on the ice rose to the
height of from 30 to 40 feet, completely hiding the contour of the shores, and that on the
breaking up of the ice in the month of February, the masses of it carried by the current
into the Sea of Marmora reunited in one immense sheet across the Hellespont between
Sestos and Abydos [Theophan. chron. i. 670 Classen, Zonar. 15. 7, Glykas ami. 4 p. 527
Bekker]. No similar occurrence has been subsequently recorded.' According to Chambers's
Encyclopedia London and Edinburgh 1923 ii. 206 s.v. 'Black Sea,' 'All the coasts are
high, with good harbours, except between the mouths of the Danube and the Crimea;
there the land is low, and the danger of navigation greatly increased in winter by the
presence of floating ice.... The shores from Odessa to the Crimea are ice-bound during
January and February; and although the harbour of Odessa is never frozen up, yet the
drift-ice frequently renders the entrance to it dangerous.' See further Hdt. 4. 28 (cited
Gell. 17. 8. 16, Macrob. Sat. 7. 12. 31), Verg. georg. 3. 349 ff., Strab. 73 and 307, Ov.
trist. 3. 10. 31 f., ex Pont. 3. 1. 15 f., 4. 9. 85 f., Sen. H.f. 539 f., Mela y. 19. 115,
Macrob. Sat. 7. 12. 32 f.

8 Supra p. 135. 1 Supra ii. 1088, 1122 f. 2 Supra p. 107 n. 3.

3 Literature on the subject is cited and in part criticised by W. Christ Geschichte der
Sriechischen Litteratur* Miinchen 1912 i. 68 f., K. Witte in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc.
vui. 2220f., Ltlbker Reallexfi p. 473, P. Cauer Grundfragen der Homerkritik'3 Leipzig
'9ir i. 136—179. The topic is dealt with here and there by D. Mulder 'Bericht liber die
Literatur zu Homer (Hohere Kritik) ftir die Jahre 1912—1919' in the Jahrcsbericht iiber
die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft 1920 clxxxii. 1 —164 and 'Bericht
tiber die Literatur zu Homer (Hohere Kritik) aus den Jahren 1920—1924' ib. 1926 ccvii.
l~~9°> 171—255. I follow the lead of my friend Dr P. Giles in the Cambridge University
Reporter for March 9, 1915 p. 696, as does that trenchant critic T. W. Allen Homer: the
Origins and the Transmission Oxford 1924 p. 103 (who, however, will not admit any
Aeolic lays'). But see now M. P. Nilsson Homer and Mycenae London 1933 p. 167 ff.,
who argues afresh that the Homeric language is a ' Kunstsprache' and concludes a most
temperate discussion thus: 'We may surmise that the first Ionic minstrels took over
Aeolic

epics—but not the songs which we read to-day—perhaps rather mechanically
substituting their own dialect and admitting chiefly such Aeolic stock expressions, words,
arid forms, for which metrically equivalent Ionic forms were wanting. As the songs were
^°nstantly rehandled and even new songs composed, the close fusion of Aeolic words and
orrns with an Ionic basis was the ultimate result. It is impossible to guess how long a
tlrne such a process may have taken. We can only be certain that it must have been long,