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)

888 Baityloi, Baitylia, and Zeus Betylos

was the neo-Platonic philosopher, who was in Athens at the time
of Proklos' death (485 A.D.) and shortly afterwards for a while
succeeded Marinos as chief of the Athenian school1. The scornful
and at times indignant Photios gives the following resume of
Damaskios' narrative.

'He says that at Heliopolis in Syria Asklepiades2 made the ascent of Mount
Libanos and saw many of the so-called baitylia or batiylofi, concerning which
he reports countless marvels worthy of an unhallowed tongue. He declares too
that he himself and Isidores subsequently witnessed these things with their
own eyes....

I saw, he says, the baitylos moving through the air. It was sometimes
concealed in its garments, sometimes again carried in the hands of its
ministrant4. The ministrant of the baitylos was named Eusebios6. This man
stated that there had once come upon him a sudden and unexpected desire to
roam at midnight away from the town of Emesa as far as he could get towards
the hill on which stands the ancient and magnificent temple of Athena8. So he
went as quickly as possible to the foot of the hill, and there sat down to rest
after his journey. Suddenly he saw a globe of fire leap down from above, and
a great lion standing beside the globe. The lion indeed vanished immediately,
but he himself ran up to the globe as the fire died down and found it to be the
baitylos. He took it up and asked it to which of the gods it might belong. It
replied that it belonged to Gennaios, the "Noble One." (Now the men of
Heliopolis worship this Gennaios and have set up a lion-shaped7 image of him
in the temple of Zeus.) He took it home with him the self-same night, travelling,
so he said, a distance not less than two hundred and ten furlongs. Eusebios,
however, was not master of the movements of his baitylos*, as others are of
theirs; but he offered petitions and prayers, while it answered with oracular
responses.

Having told us this trash and much more to the same effect, our author,
who is veritably worthy of his own baitylia, adds a description of the stone and
its appearance. It was, he says, an exact globe, whitish in colour, three hand-
breadths across. But at times it grew bigger, or smaller; and at other times it
took on a purple hue. He showed us, too, letters that were written on the stone,
painted in the pigment called tingdbari, "cinnabar0." Also it knocked on

1 W. Kroll in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. ix. 2063.

2 A neo-Platonist, expert in Egyptian theology (J. Freudenthal ib. ii. 1631 no. 35)-

3 Zonar. lex. s.v. /SeuriAos- \(0os yevb/xevo^ Kara jbv Mfiavov, to opos rijs'HXiouTrAAe""'
cp. el. mag. p. 192, 56 (text imperfect).

* For such Xidocpopoi see J. Schmidt in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. xiii. 774 f. and
E. Maass in the Rhein. Mus. 1929 lxxviii. 18.

6 A well-omened name appropriate to a priest [supra ii. 921 n. o).

c Athena stands next to Keraunos on the relief from Emesa (supra ii. 814 n. 3 wij
fig. 780).

7 Supra i. 571, cp. 575 with fig. 443 a.

8 Cp. supra i. 355, 357, 552. ^

9 An odd parallel may be seen in G. Pansa Mitt, leggende e superstizioni dell' At?***,
Sulmona 1927 ii. 39 ff. G. Mascitti, an abbot who lived at Pentima at the end of t'ie
seventeenth century, in his MS. description of Corfinium states that about 1695 there wa