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)

866 The aigis of Athena transferred to Zeus

(5) The aigis of Athena transferred to Zeus.

It would seem, then, that the aigis was, and had been from time
immemorial, an attribute of Athena. That pre-Greek mountain-
mother was wont to manifest herself as Snake or Owl, and on
attaining human form continued to wear the old snake-skin or
owl-skin as a potent relic of her animal estate. Further, the snake's
head or owl's head tended from the first to take on the apotropaic
features of the Libyan Gorgon: as a Gorgoneion it had, we saw,
quite a history of its own.

If such was the story of the aigis, one point is still obscure.
Should we not expect to find that in the earliest extant literature
of the Greeks the aigis would be treated as the exclusive property
of Athena? And yet that is far from being the case. Athena
wears it, of course1. But so also does Apollon2, and even uses it
to wrap round the dead body of Hektor3. More than that. Among
the pre-Homeric appellatives embedded in Homeric verse4 few are
so frequent or so universally recognised as Zeus aigiochos, Zeus the
' aigis-bearer5,' which in Iliad and Odyssey together occurs just fifty
times6, but is never once applied to Athena7. How, we may well
ask, did Zeus come thus to usurp the sacred prerogative of Athena?
Fully to answer that question would demand a better knowledge
than we possess of the momentous transition from Aegean to
Achaean worship8. Homer at most drops a single significant
hint:

The copper-smith Hephaistos gave the same
For Zeus to wear and rout mankind withal9.

1 //. 2. 446 ff., 5. 738 ff., 18. 203 f., 21. 400 f.

2 //. 15. 307 ff., 318, 360 f.

3 //. 24. 10 f. 4 Supra i. 444, ii. 384 n. o, iii. 781.

5 Supra i. 1411. 1, iii. 13.

6 A. Gehring Index Homericus Lipsiae 1891 p. 23 (almost always in the geI1'
aiyiSxoto, but Od. 9. 275 gen. 01716x01;, and II. 2. 375 nom. aiyloxos UpovlS-qs Zeis an
77. 8. 287, Od. 15. 245 nom. Zeis r aiyloxos).

7 The nearest she gets to it is in such phrases as 'Adrjvalij Koip-q Aids alyibx010

(II. i;

733. 8- 384, Od. 13. 252, 371, 24. 529, 547 etc.), Oiyarep Aids alyibxow (II. 5. 8lS)'.
t' aiyloxos KaVA.dr)vri (II. 8. 287). See H. Ebeling Lexicon Homericum Lipsiae 1885 4

8 For what may be reasonably conjectured with regard to this transitional period se
especially the works of M. P. Nilsson The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and its Sw""
in Greek Religion Lund 1927, The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology Cam
1932, Homer and Mycenae London 1933. There is a helpful statement of its outstan ^
problems by A. W. Gomme in E. Eyre European Civilization its Origin and Develop1'1
Oxford 1935 i. 507—538.

9 //. 15. 309 f. rjv &pa xaX/cei)s | "H0aiaTos Ail dwKe (f>op-qp.evat is <p6fiov avSpuiv. ^
Aristonikos of Alexandreia, a famous Homeric scholar who lived in the tun