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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#0555

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Rain of blood

481

There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things1.

Different in character is a mystic and possibly Orphic anthropo-
gony quoted by Julian2 in his Letter to a Priest—

ne saying of the gods, which has been handed down to us by the theurgists of
"gone days, to wit that, when Zeus was ordering all things, there fell drops of

sacred blood, and that from these sprang the race of men.'

Th'

j s rather isolated notion seems to have arisen, in some more or
^ss philosophical milieu3, from an attempt to combine two passages
° Hesiod. In the Theogony4; when Kronos mutilated Ouranos,
_la received the blood-drops and in due course gave birth to the
f rinyes, the G igantes, and the nymphs called Meliai, 'Ash-trees.'
n the Works and Days5 Zeus produces the men of the Bronze Age
r°m meliai, 'ash-trees.' It followed, or seemed to follow, that the
„ °t the Bronze Age were sprung from the blood-drops of
Uranos himself. Alkaios too and Akousilaos, presumably re-
enng that Phaiakia was named Drepdne after the drepanon or

Slckle
were s

used by Kronos6, had claimed that the Phaeacians likewise
Prungfrom the blood of Ouranos7.

a £ Keats Lamia t.^ ff.
Wi 0eo - efils*- 292 A—B ■•• CI'S TV" T&>v StCiv (prux-qv, rj wapaSiSoTai 5ia tSji> apxaiw
r^ 7£>v txvQ^"' WS' °Te ixiff/iei to, iravTa, GTaybvuv aL/naros iepov TreuovaCiv, Zl- wv irov
tenders • fU7ru"' /^<WTi}<rete yevos. Miss W. C. Wright in the Loeb edition (London 1913)
k'°od.' g ^nen Zeus was setting all things in order there fell from him drops of sacred

3 The "l Words 'from him' are not in the Greek and may be misleading.

^'e's aP S'aUSE °TE ^£"S "°<r'ae' ™ ™pto. recalls the phraseology of Anaxagoras {frag. 12
CP' Plat j^P''0- ** Aristot. phys. p. 156, 26 Diels irauTa Sieicb<rnr)<rt vovs, ib. p. 177,

r°lini lR laed' 97 1!~c> Philodem. vepl ev^elas 4a = H. Diels Doxographi Graeci
an'mals had ^' ^2 ^ + ^-aert• 2- ^< etc0> wno moreover held that plants and

^ 1' 4, Ei arisen from seed dropped by the sky upon the ground (Theophr. hist. pi.

4 Hes r,eriOS adv- haer- 2- «4- 2 (vii. 751 A Migne)).
a 5Hes. ^I54ff-:^™ii-447 n. 8.

PP^ars ijj. , ' I+3 ff. That theog. 187 was early brought into connexion with o.d. 145
*;lltious Vftrii y from thcog. 563, where the right reading peXiqun (codd. D. E.) has the
* ^Xiffl* i MeW°<« (codd. F. K. L.) with schol. jteXioicri Si ijroi roh dxflpuiTrois fi Sri

'a i* °VTo VX)ix<Pu>v rj 6tl ytvvib/jievoi eppiirrovTO virb reus /xeXfcus, 8 i<rri dfrdpois.

j^"Co"o,(\(Xos * ^\ Rhod. 4. 0QI f. (jjs 5^ Ka; a^roi j aifiaros Oupavioio yivot 4>a()jKes fturti')
^ Jacoby)) T? Tf'T? (/''^ 29 (-Fraf. Cr. i. 103 Muller) =frag. 4 gr. Hist.

y , ^^di/a; . r,^iv °Ti *K tVS (KTop.fis tov Ovpavov pavldas ivexSv"ai avviweaev, rovrian
95^1'<»»T«J '>aT*iT^s 7^s, 4£ wi> yevvri0^ai rovi Qalanas- oi Se (sc. Hes. M«((f. 183 ff.)
tiS» °nds (e , A}Ka'0S (frag- 116 Bergk4 (' Nescio an 'AXkM" sit legendum') =frag.

Hi.

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