Universitätsbibliothek HeidelbergUniversitätsbibliothek Heidelberg
Metadaten

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

DOI Seite / Zitierlink: 
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14698#0978

DWork-Logo
Überblick
loading ...
Faksimile
0.5
1 cm
facsimile
Vollansicht
OCR-Volltext
Zeus and the Hail

877

5. Again, if you carry the skin of a hyaena or crocodile or seal round your
place and then hang it up before the doors of your house, hail will not
fall1.

6. Or, if you hang many keys of different rooms on a string round your
place, the hail will pass by.

7. And, if you set wooden bulls on your buildings, that will help greatly.

8. And, if you take a tortoise found in the marshes and place it on its back
in your right hand, you should then carry it all over your vineyard.
When you have gone the round of it, then proceed to the middle of your
vineyard, set the creature still alive on its back, having heaped a little
earth round it in order that it may not be able to turn itself about and
•get away (it will not be able to do so, if the ground under its feet is a bit
hollow, for having nothing to push against it must needs stay where it
is), and if you do this, no hail would fall on your field or whole estate2.

9. Some folk say that you should carry round and deposit the tortoise at
the sixth hour of the day or night.

10. Apuleius3 of Rome asserts that, if you paint a bunch of grapes on a tablet
and dedicate the same in the vineyard when Lyra is setting, the fruit
remains free from injury4. Lyra begins to set on the 23rd of January and
sets completely on the 4th of February5.

11. This is what has been said by the ancients. But I hold that some of their
sayings are too unseemly and should be rejected, and I advise all and
sundry to ignore them altogether. I have included them simply that
I may not seem to be omitting anything said by the ancients.

12. And strips cut from the hide of a hippopotamus, placed at each of the
boundaries, stop the threatening hail.

1. 15 More concerning Hail. By Africanus0.
[The text of this chapter is brief, but so corrupt that little can be made of it7.]

1 Pallad. i. 35. 14 grandini creditur obviare, si quis crocodili pellem vel hyaenae vel
marini vituli per spatia possessionis circumferat et in villae aut cortis suspendat ingressu,
CUm malum viderit imminere.

"allad. 1. 3j. 14 item si palustrem testudinem dextra manu supinam ferens vineas
Perambulet, et reversus eodem modo sic illam ponat in terra, et glebas dorsi eius obiciat
Ufvaturae, ne possit inverti sed supina permaneat. hoc facto fertur spatium sic defensum
nubes inimica transcurrere.

Apul. de mundo 3 and 8 mentions hail, but says nothing of this method of averting
1 • Is 'AttouXtjios 6 'Pu/xoiVAs a blunder for Ovdppav (infra n. 4)? Confusion is worse
Unfounded by the Armenian version 'Paulus der Romer' and the Syriac 'Theophilus
^ecimus,' on which see E. Fehrle in STOIXEIA iii. 13 n. 8.

Plin. nat. hist. 18. 294 Varro auctor est, si fidiculae occasu, quod est initium
auturnni, uva picta consecretur inter vites, minus nocere tempestates.

For rrj wpo Sffra KaXavSuv AeKe^piav codd. Fehrle restored ttj irpo Stun Ka\avbG>i>
e^povaplav (from ttJ irpb (vdeKa KaXafduv Qevpovapiuv cod. Parisin. 2313).
6 Supra p. 876 n. 2.

H. Beckh in the Teubner ed. of 1895 prints without comment EtfXa iatpv-qvai
^pSivov Kv-inxai aXKi)wpriotu- tt)s 5i '{kolctov ko.6' (Kaarov K\ijp.a XPV etpal re Kal xwcrai.
6 rec°fds but one variant—aWioplffav cod. H.
Peter Needham (Cantabrigiae 1704) gave up the passage as hopeless. J. N. Niclas
 
Annotationen