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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#0830

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736 Significance of the birth of Athena

which the worshippers had passed. If the results of our somewhat
scattered enquiry may be gathered up in the form of a diagram,

ZEUS

storm-god

thunderbolt
and eagle

Attic

from Ekusis

POSEIDON

(by-form of Zeus)
god of streams,
lakes, sea

(lightning-fork)

trident

fishing-spear

Ionian

from Boiotia (?)

HEPHAISTOS

lightning-god
fire-god

ATHENA

rock-goddess

double axe
hammer

olive, snake, owl

Pelasgian
or Tyrsenian

from Asia Minor

Pelasgian
or Tyrsenian

from Asia Minor

I should maintain that the cults of the Akropolis can be arrange
chronologically in a threefold stratification1. Athena and Hephaistos
came first, being a pre-Hellenic pair, the rock-goddess and the fir^
god of an Anatolian people best called Pelasgian or Tyrsenian •
The next to arrive, perhaps via Boiotia3, was the Ionian Poseidon>
originally a lightning-god to judge from his trident4, though laj^
taken to be a sea-god with a fishing-spear5: at first in conflict W

, rest of

Minoan-Mycenaean goddess; but he cannot be her husband, since she, like the ,^gt.
her kind, has either no consort or an insignificant one; therefore he must be hel ^
But she can have no mother, for that would subordinate her to some other gocldess,^^^^
as Hera or Persephone, and she is far too important for that. Hence her ml

n early

birth, which represents, if we could but recover the details, an interesting chapter
diplomacy and ecclesiastical polity.' jfogir

1 I first put forward this scheme in a course of Lectures on The Gods of A J^' Qt&f
Significance and Stratification, which was given at Cambridge on the ]•
Foundation, Feb. 14, 21, and 28, 1936. ' thus

A curious, but of course quite fortuitous, result of my arrangement is that .^0„)
obtain deities of earth (Athena), air (Zeus), fire (Hephaistos), and water (
comparable with the personified elements of Empedokles (supra i. 31).

2 Supra pp. 189 ft, 224 ff., 236. TfBoe°ti9n

3 On Boiotia as an early centre of Poseidon-worship see supra ii. 583 n. 3- ,g^),
Adv = ' Zeus' (supra ii. 342 n. o, 344 n. o), then 7rorei-Adc=' Lord Zeus' (supr®
cp. irbTvia "Uprj = ' Lady Hera' (supra i. 444 n. 5, 456 n. 8). » F°r

"f/— "«UJ ifcia \*ujiiu. 1. 444 u. j, 4ju u. o;. ti
Poseidon, though coming from Boiotia, may still have been Ionian by de

.V01

Boiotia, as Professor Myres has recently proved, was overrun by Ionians in Pr^ .(ji
days (J. L. Myres Who were the Greeks? Univ. of California Press 1930 PP'
n. 133).

4 Supra ii. 789 ff"., 850. 6 Supra ii. 786, 790 f., 850.

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