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)

236 Hephaistos and Athena

method of allegorical conjecture had come curiously near to divining
the original significance of Hephaistos.

Hephaistos and Athena—if I am right—were at first the sky-
father and the mountain-mother of a Pelasgian or Tyrsenian race,
which had its prehistoric home in Asia Minor. And in the rude
tale of their attempted union I should detect a popular survival of
their old Asiatic myth. The earliest allusion to it is a propos of a
sixth-century craftsman from Magnesia on the Maiandros1. That
may be accident. But it can hardly be accidental that the closest
parallels to the myth are found on Mount Agdos in Galatia2 and
among the peasants of the Caucasus3. All the evidence, linguistic,
religious, mythological, really points in one direction—towards Asia
Minor as the cradle of both deities alike.

The worship of Hephaistos and Athena, proper to the Pelasgian
or Tyrsenian population of Athens, was complicated by that of
other gods and goddesses as soon as Hellenic settlers entered
Attike. An influx of Aeolians, who had swarmed off from Thessaly
and settled on the north bank of the Ilissos4 (let us say, with
Periphas as their king5;, brought with them from Mount Olympos
the cult of Zeus Olympios and Ge Olympia. With Ge Olympia was
in all probability connected the rite of the Arrhephoria and the
mythical birth of Erichthonios6. These purely Hellenic powers
never quite dispossessed their Pelasgian predecessors, who in the
sixth and fifth centuries recovered something of their former prestige
thanks to the Panathenaic policy inaugurated by Peisistratos •
Hence the gradual intrusion of Athena and Hephaistos into
representations of a myth, which was strictly concerned with Ge as
fructified by the fertilising dew of Zeus8. Erichthonios, instead of
being the child of Zeus by Ge, is the child of Hephaistos by<Ge9 or,

1 Supra p. 220 f. 2 Supra ii. 969 n. 4.

3 Miss E. M. Dance, in an unpublished treatise (An Analysis of the Orphic Myths 1933
p. 12 f.) which she kindly allowed me to read in type-script, compares the myths of Mithras
bora of a rock (F. Cumont in Daremberg—Saglio Diet. Ant. iii. 1953), Agdistis, arid
Hephaistos with A. Dirr Kaukasische Marchen (Marchen der Weltliteratur) Jena i9'2
p. 182: 'Eines Tages wuscrt Satdna ihre Hosen und breitete sie auf einem Steine ta»
Trocknen aus. Da kam Uastyrdji und sagte: "Deine Hosen kommen mir nicht aus >
naherte sich und liess seinen Samen auf sie ausstromen. Davon wurde der Stein, *u
dem die Hosen lagen, schwanger.' After nine months Satana split the stone and a
child, the hero of the Marchen, came forth.

4 Supra ii. 1123, iii. 169 n. o. » Supra ii. 1121 ff.

6 Supra pp. 169 n. o, 188. 7 Supra p. 188 n. 3. s Supra p. 188.

a Isokr. 12 Panathenaicus 126 'EptxBovios llh yap 0 <pbs <r£ 'U<palcrTOv Kal Tijs
Paus. 1. 2. 6 -waitpa Se 'EpixtfoWy X^yowii- avffpd>ira>t> /xtv ovStva etvai, yovias bk"H4>aL<rTC"'
Kal Trjv, cp. Kallim. Hekale frag. 1. 2, 7 Mair (supra p. 220 n. 2) ws d^Oev i)<t> 'H<Pa'ffT'1'
rcKev Ala and Nonn. Dion. 41. 63 f. cited infra p. 237 n. 1.