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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#0384

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Prayers to Zeus for rain

A parallel to this was published by A. Korte1. Near Tschukur-
hissar, a village in Phrygia, he found an inscribed marble stele now
used as the doorstep of a house. The inscription (fig. 203), so far as
it can be restored, gives us three or four passable hexameters and is
dated in the consulship of Salvius Iulianus and Calpurnianus (sic)
Piso, that is, in 175 A.D. We may render it:

Wet thou the ground
That with thick crops and corn it may abound.
Zeus Kronos' son, thus Metreodoros prays
And victims fair before thine altar slays.

NKAPTTAf .AZBP!|§
'BiMiU/l IZTAXYEZZIT E OH AHT/^i \
IIIIIIH H TP EO A A PO 2 EE A A I TO M AIK PO
IIAAZEYAM^IT EOI2B AMOI2INETTHP
PATAOYMATAPEZAN

ZAA B IAIOYAIANAKA1KA
ATTOYPNIANATTEI2ANIY
IT AT O II

Fig. 203.

Alkiphron, a later contemporary of Lucian2, pens a graphic litt'e
sketch of an Attic village distressed by lack of rain. His description
takes the form of a letter from Thalliskos to Petraios:

'The drought is now on. Not a cloud above the horizon. What we want is
a real downpour; for the absolute dryness of the soil shows the fields to
suffering from thirst. It would seem that our sacrifices to the Rain-god have
been addressed in vain to deaf ears. And yet all the inhabitants of our viHa8e
fairly vied with each other in their offerings. We contributed, according t0
ability or our abundance, one man a ram, another a he-goat, a third a boar,
poor man brought a cake, the poorer still a pinch of frankincense. Nobody coUejj
manage a bull, since we who occupy the thin-soiled part of Attike are not « ^
off for cattle. However, the money we spent has done us no good. It looks

e^x^" rbv 17'Xioc and Eustath. in II. p. 881, 42 ff. \<?£eis &pa \ wffirep to. iraiW "t£eX

tpX ijXie." Athen. 619 B tj 5e els 'AirdWuva wdr] 0[\7j\ms, ws TeXAriXAa (frag- 2 Bp.;i0
wapiar^cnv. In Aristoph. vesp. 88 <pi\-r]\ia.<rTris there is of course a sly reference to
kleon's second childhood). ^

1 A. Korte in the Ath. Mitth. 1900 xxv. 421 f. no. .33 7<"]0"> I K£t'"rw %eQ, \
Ppl[6y iced iv]i a-Tax<JC<r<yi Ted^rj. | r[aOr]d [<re] MT]Tpe65wpos eyio Mro/tai, ^P^f^^t
d/i0i reois /Sw/iOiW irnppaTa dvp.ara pifav. SaX/3/w 'IoiAiaeui Kal 'Kahvovpvia.vu
inraTois (a would-be ablative absolute on the analogy of the Latin formula).

2 W, Christ Geschichte der griechischen Litterateur* Munchen 1924 2- &2^'
 
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