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)

524 Pyre-extinguishing rain

judgment-seat of the proconsul Kastelios, and, when Thekla would
give no answer to his interrogation,

'her mother cried aloud "Burn the lawless girl, burn the unmarried maid 111

'A

the midst of the theatre, that all the women taught by this man may be aft310.
The governor, deeply moved, scourged Paul and cast him out of the city, an
ordered Thekla to be burned. He then went straight to the theatre, and all the
multitude came out to see Thekla. She, like a lamb in the desert looking roun
for its shepherd, sought to see Paul. In the crowd she saw the Lord seated m
the guise of Paul and exclaimed " Lo, when I can endure no longer, PaU' ^aS
come to behold me!" And she fixed her eyes on him, till he went up to hea\ ^
But now the girls and virgins brought logs to burn Thekla. She came in stai^
naked, whereupon the governor burst into tears and marvelled at the power
rested upon her. The executioners strewed the logs for her to mount the p>1
She made the sign of the cross and set foot on the logs, while the attend^ ^
kindled them below. A great fire blazed up, but did not touch her. For "° •]
his mercy caused an underground rumbling, and a cloud full of water and ^
overshadowed her from above, and poured forth all its contents insomuch 1 ^
many persons were like to be drowned, and the fire was extinguished,
Thekla was saved.'

Finally, a downpour, if not in time to save life, might at
indicate divine disapproval of the victim's death. When Britann
poisoned by Nero, was being carried to a pyre hastily built on ^
Campus Martius, so fierce a rain-storm fell that the common ^
held it to portend the anger of the gods at a crime which rn°stjurjd
were prepared to excuse. So Tacitus1. Dion Cassius2 adds ^g
detail: Nero, to hide the ravages of the poison, had smears ^g
body with gypsum; but, as the procession passed throu&
Forum, the heavy rain washed off the gypsum and left the e
discoloration for all to see. ^aVe

In Egypt the place of Zeus the rain-god was taken, as we ^s
had occasion to note 3, by the Nile, which in Hellenistic titn^ by
actually worshipped as Neilos Zeus. Hence in the n° ^gs
Xenophon of Ephesos4 (s. ii or iii A.D.5), when the hero ^-a^°e pyre
is condemned by the governor of Egypt to be burnt ahv~e>_
in answer to his prayers is extinguished by a miraculous use
river Nile,

1 Tac. ami. 13. 17- 2 Dion Cass. 61. 4-

3 Supra p. 348 f. * Xen. Efhes. 4; ^ g,0 n. i

5 W. Christ Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur* Muhchen i<)2+ n' pat ]■ '
assigns the work, with some hesitation, to the half-century ?*>°~3°° ' J 1933 P'
Powell New Chapters in the History of Greek Literature Third Series Ox 0
n. 3 is content to place it between 98 A.D. and 263 A.D.