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 relation of rain to Zeus 333

Arnouphis. We should rather suppose that the sculptor was en-
deavouring to personify and portray the actual rain-storm. Details
°f his new artistic type were presumably borrowed from Ovid's1
description of the South Wind as a winged figure with water
streaming from his beard and pinions. But the face is that of Iupiter,
and in view of the close parallelism between the column of Marcus
■A-Urelius and the column of Trajan2, which in a like position had
Placed Iupiter fulminant3, we are practically compelled to identify
this novel personage with Iupiter Pluviusx.

Rain, then, was conceived sometimes as the child of Zeus,
s°metimes as the tears of Zeus, sometimes as water falling from the
hand of Zeus—a conception which the Romans shared with the
Greeks. One other image is notorious. Aristophanes in a line already
cited6 spoke of rain as the water of Zeus passed through a sieve.

Fig. 209.

^• Scott Hermetica Oxford 1924 i. 32 n. 1, with Frontispiece, describes a sectile
enient at the west end of the Duomo in Siena, which shows Hermes Mercurius Tris-
\xf'StUS ' con^tf^ponmeus Moysi. Hermes is here an elderly man with long hair and
eard. Jje wears a high pointed hat or mitre and hands an open book, to a turbaned
the^f1'311 P) in the presence of a hooded Italian (?). But we have no reason to think that
ta-^ Vermes invoked by Arnouphis would have been represented as a winged deity with
co'n droPping from his pinions. 'Gnostic' amulets, e.g. fig. 209 from a specimen in my

ection (material, bloodstone : scale \), give variations of the usual type,
jj. , met- 264 ff. madidis Notus evolat alis, | terribilem picea tectus caligine voltum. |
sin gravis nimbis; canis fluit unda capillis; | fronte sedent nebulae; rorant pennaeque
"Usque. I utque manu late (lata cod. e1) pendentia nubila pressit, | fit fragor: hinc (ct
cj * A.e.X.) densi funduntur ab aethere nimbi. The rain-god of the column bears so
se a resemblance to Ovid's Notus that A. von Domaszewski did not hesitate to call
(W \r name (***pra P- 329 n. o). The source of met. t. 244—312 is unknown

j. a resemblance to Ovid's Notus that A. von Domaszewski did not hesitate to call
"J1 by that name (supra p. 329 n. o). The source of »
" *oUgraff Nikander und 0«V Groningen 19091. 104).

2 E. Courbaud Le bas-relief romain a reprisentations historiques Paris 1899 p. 185 «•

Supra i. 60 fig. 34. .
4 This is in fact the common identification (e.g. W. Ramsay in Smith Did. Biogr.
i. 441, Reinach Rip. Reliefs i. 300. no. 23f.).
Aristoph. nub. 373 xaii-oi irpbrtpov t(,v Ai' d\7;0ws fii^y 5io kovkIvov oiptiv (supra Ll. 2).

3