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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

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https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14698#0380

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314 Rain-magic in the cult of Zeus

iii. Rain-magic in the cult of Zeus.

Primitive rain-magic was in Greece commonly taken up into the
cult of Zeus. The epic appellative nephelegereta implies that already
in the second millennium B.C. Zeus was conceived as a rain-making
magician1. And a like inference may be drawn from his constant
epithet aigtockos2. Indeed, in more than one passage of the Iliad
we can detect a literary reminiscence of the weather-maker's devices;
for instance, in Agamemnon's ominous words—

The day shall come when holy Ilios,
Priam, and Priam's folk (stout spearman he),
Shall be destroyed, and Zeus the son of Kronos,
Seated on high, dwelling in light divine,
Shall shake his darkling aigis at them all,
Wroth for this guile3.—

or, later, in the poet's description of the fighting over Patroklos—

Then Kronos' son caught up his tasselled aigis,

Gleaming, and hid Mount Ide under cloud,

Lightened and thundered and made quake the ground4.

Clearly, to shake the aigis is to cause a storm—a thoroughly magica'
procedure.

If it may be assumed that such poetic phraseology was founded
on cult-usage, the actual rain-maker was probably the priest of Zeus
impersonating his god. It is tempting to interpret in that sense
a curious statement in the Aeneid. Virgil, concerned to deHv^
Roman antiquities from Greece, is hinting apparently at a suppoS
connexion between the Arx and the Arcades*, when he makes
Evander say to Aeneas a propos of the wooded Capitol—

This grove, this hill with leafy top some god—
We know not who0—inhabits. My Arcadians
Believe that they have seen the very Jove
Oft shake the darkling aegis in his hand
And call the rain-clouds".

I Supra i. 14 n. 1, iii. 30 ft'., 296. 2 Supra i. 14 n. !• ww

3 77. 4. 164 ft", ioaerai yfiap St' av ttot' iXciXfllXios Ipi) | nal Uplauos koX Xaos jy(Jfl
Mpid/tOLO, I Zeus Si arf>i KpovtS-qs inplfryos, aiBipi vaiuv, \ atirbs iTnaadrjaw ipelfV^ ^
Tram \ rijaS' airaT-qs Koriuv. Cp. II, 15. 229 f. where Zeus lends his aigis to h-V° ° /we
says: dXXd crvy' if x^peacn Xd)3' alylSa dvaavSeaeav, \ rrj (with variant tt)v) Ma?l err
Qofihiv rfpwas 'A^aio^s. ^ }e

4 77. 17- 593 ff. /ecu tot' &pa KpoviSrjs eXer' aiyiSa Bvaavbeco-av \ fiap^P^'> St
Kara ve<phc<ji Kokviptv, | aaTpiipas Si /raXa p.eyaX 'iKTVire, t^v (Zenodotos rea

rfrja&. ' „rtern°ntis'

5 Solin. x. 1 quam (sc. Roraam) Arcades quoniam habitassent in excelsa pai

derivatum deinceps, ut tutissima urbium arces vocarentur.

II Supra i. 711 ff. (Vediovis, the youthful Iupiter). u;s de<-tS
7 Verg. Acn. 8. 351 ff. 'hoc nemus, hunc,' inquit, 'frondoso vertice collerni I
 
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