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)

44° The holed vessel in Italy

with fundus1. The mundus on the Palatine may in fact be a religious
survival, perpetuating the equipment of a primitive homestead.

Neither the granary- nor the well-hypothesis will quite adequately
explain the dreadful sanctity that in Roman belief attached to the
Palatine mundus or justify its description as 'the jaws of Pluto2,
'the gate of gloomy underworld gods3', and 'the portal of Orcus4 •
These expressions point rather to a third possibility. Was the
mundus originally neither a granary, nor a well, but a tomb—say the
Bronze-Age tholos of the Palatine king? As such it might fairly be
dubbed mundus by a later generation and held to imitate the
celestial vault5. Offerings of food and other necessaries brought to
the buried king might in Italy as in Greece lead to his grave being
deemed a thesaurds* and even, in post-regal times, being treated as
a real or symbolic store-house for the seed-corn of the community •
Lastly, the stone that formed the apex or finial of the tomb would
doubly deserve its name manalis. For, while some wou Id think of
the Manes8 returning from the Underworld to help their people IP
distress, others might remember that to open up the grave of a
buried king was one method of inducing a deluge of rain9. In sh°rt'

1 Not included as such by H. Giintert Uber Reimwortbildungen im Ariseh»:£.
AUgriechischen Heidelberg 1914. J. Vendryes 'La famille du latin mundus "monde

siit-g/tct/iijLnc/t iitiuv.iuwg 1ylit' J* vciiuiyca j_,ct ituiime uu iciuu murium —— trftlS

the Mimoires de la sociiti de linguistique de Paris 1914 xviii. 305—310 regards W
as a dialect-form of fundus ('C'est d'un ancetre commun *tUndo- que mundus etf ^

seraient sortis____On peut d'abord recourir a Phypothese d'une distinction dialectale e ^

fundus rural oppose a un mundus urbain; mais ce mundus urbain lui-meme est peltt ^
d'origine etrangere (ombrienne?)' etc.), and both as related to a Celtic *dubno- P16^ all
in the Irish domun 'world,'the Gallic Dubnotalos, Dubnocouevos, Dumnotvti e<LC'
this is highly speculative. .. jl-0.

2 Supra p. 432 n. 1. s lb. 4 Supra p. 432 n. 4. s Supra U' qrcJiO

6 In the epitaph on Cn. Naevius preserved by Gell. r. 24. 2 I should take ^
traditus ihesduro.Xa mean 'handed over to Orchus as store-house.'- F. Skutsc ^
render 'handed over to Orchus for a treasure,' cp. dono dare. E. Bahrens in "°m 'q^o
min. vi. 296 attributes the epigram to M. Terentius Varro and prints his own
traditus thesaurus ('coffer,' i.e. coffin). Cod. Buslidianus gives orchi and thesauri-
the restorations Orci traditus thesauro (possible) and Orcino, Orcio, OreVOO
thesauro (highly improbable): see De Vit Lat. Lex. s.v. 'Orcinus.' perrot^
The term 8rio-avp6s as applied to the tlwlos-tombs of Greece is criticised by ^mnet
Chipiez Hist, de VArt vi. 356 f., Frazer Pausanias iii. 126, H. Ilitzig and H- ^ ^
on Paus. 2. 16, J. L. Myres Who were the Greeks? Berkeley, California 1930 P" '^o)-
many others. 7 Cp. Sir J. G. Frazer on Ov.fast. 4- 821 (1'

8 On the Manes I have said my say in Folk-Lore 1905 xvi. 293 fft 0f tt>e

9 Frazer Golden Bough*: The Magic Art i. 284—287 ('Making rain by mean
dead'), supra p. 369 n. 3. ^ regliaSSe

A striking case is that of Antaios king of Mauretania : Mela 3. 106 hie Antae j^jnis
dicituf, et signum quod tabulae clarum prorsus ostenditur collis modicus resupin .^jes
imagine iacentis, illius ut incolae ferunt tumulus: unde ubi aliqua pars eruta est so n, i&
spargi, et donee effossa repleantur eveniunt. Gerhard Auserl. Vascnb. h- i°5 n-' s\ ^ntai°s
and K. Wernicke in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. i. 2340 think that the my 1