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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#0550

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476 The myth of Danae and analogous myths

'His mother was, it is said, a woman of exquisite beauty, admired and sough1
after by all men, they making her presents of corn and skins and all that they
had; but the fastidious beauty would accept nothing of them but their gifts- *n
process of time a season of drought brought on a famine and much distress,
then it was that the rich lady showed her charity to be as great in one direction
as it had been wanting in another. She opened her granaries and the gifts 0
the lovers she had not loved went to releave the hungry she pitied. At last with raiPi
fertility returned to the earth ; and on the chaste Artemis of the Pueblos its touc ^
fell too. She bore a son to the thick summer shower and that son was Montezuma-

The same story is current among the Pimas of California,
Mojave of the Rio Colorado in Arizona, and the Apaches1. Indae >
the belief in conception through magical contact with water is 0
world-wide distribution2.

We are justified, then, in the surmise that Danae's golden showe^
was but a mythical expression for the rain whereby the s^ ^e
fertilises the earth. But what of Danae herself? She is hardly to
regarded as an earth-goddess, for she has no cult. Rather she lS ,
heroine, whose name stands in obvious relation to that of the V&1 _
or Dana'tdes3. Her myth too is in some points analogous to the11
If Akrisios, king of Argos, imprisoned Danae in an undergr~oU ^
chamber to safeguard her virginity, his action bore an
resemblance to that of his forefather Danaos, likewise king ot & f> ,
who had imprisoned Hypermestra, the one Danaid that rema ^
a virgin4. And if Zeus descended upon Danae in the forr° ^g
golden rain, we cannot forget that the Danaides stood f°r „,g
performance of a mimetic rain-charm5. It may well be that ^
complex tale6 includes at least one episode of an aetiologica t
and that the princess secluded, drenched with rain, and eV^UIIjaiJ
adrift in a coffer was a mythical prototype of actual 1
happenings. „

I.] w i

1 E. S. Hartland Primitive Paternity London 1909 i. 24, citing L-b-^1 golul;eJ
[History of the New World called America Oxford 1892] i. 414 n. 4 and '^t. S^S''

'of

in the Journal of] Am[erican\ F\plk\^pre 1889] ii. 178. E. J. Payne lo('&^Bg W
' Exceptionally, as in the beautiful legend told by the Pima Indians cone

inhabitants of the deserted Casas Grandes, the maize-spirit appears as an acWa ^teSSeS 0
mankind. They describe her as a maiden living in isolation, unmoved by the a ^ ^ W
suitors, and giving maize to the hungry Indians in times of dearth. One day, ^ m»'^
asleep, a raindrop fell on her naked bosom, and she became the ancestress js
growing Pueblo Indians.' J. G. Bourke loc. cit. tells the Mojave myth: ' up0n ^
woman; the Sky is a man... the Earth was asleep and a drop of ram ^ ^ D
causing conception... two gods were born in the west... They were Ku-
brother, To-chi-pa.' ffi""1*

- E. S. Hartland The Legend of Perseus London 1894 i- 113 133
Paternity London 1909 i. 12 f., 23 ff. jv_ r6J-

3 Supra p. 364. See also A. H. Sayce in the Journ. Hell. Stud. 19*5 f

4 Sufra p. 356. 5 Supra p. 368 f. 6 Supra p. 45s •
 
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