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 birth of Athena in art

685

Beazley to his ' Geras Painter1,' a minor artist of c. 480—470 B.C.
It depicts the middle group of deities only, and rather clumsily
exaggerates the size of Eileithyia at the expense of Zeus2.

Fig. 49*1.

1 J. D. Beazley Attic Red-figured Vases in American Museums Cambridge Mass. iyi8
r* 56 f., {,/. Attischc V'asenmaler des rolfigurigen Stils Tubingen 1925 p. 110 no. 11.

It may be noticed in passing that this mother-and-child motif was applied by
Athenian vase-painters not only to Zeus and Athena, but also to Zeus and Dionysos.
A black-figured example of the latter has already been given (supra ii. 273 n. 3 with
nR' • 77> which having suffered an accidental exchange of right for left is here replaced by
more correct fig. 495): in it Zeus kept his own thunderbolt and sceptre, 'Zeus' boy'
rnndished torches, and the original Eileithyia was transformed into Hera. A red-figured
'e"-irati'r found, full of ashes and small vases, in tomb no. 31 r of the Val di Trebbia
necropolis near Comacchio (A. Negrioli in the Not. Scavi 1927 p. 166 pi. id (=my fig.
+96), M. I. Rostovtzeff Mystic Italy New York 1927 Frontispiece, C. Dugas in the Rev.
Gr. 1929 xlii. 89 fig. y) has a noble long-haired Zeus sitting on a high-backed chair,
e wears an olive (?)-wreath, a tagged or embroidered chitdn, anil a plain himdtion. But
' Painter has given him a distinctly Dionysiac character by making him shoulder a
yrsos by w ay of sceptre and use a fawn-skin as his antimacassar, while he supports the
'ffant Dionysos already equipped with ivy-wreath, vine-stem, and ktintharos. In this