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 stone of Kronos 931

white-haired1, who sceptre in hand and swathed in an ample
himdtion stands ready to receive from Rhea the well wrapped and
carefully held substitute for the infant Zeus2. Rhea, like an epic
queen, is accompanied by a couple of handmaids3, who, to judge
from the obvious alarm of the first and the simulated stance of the
second, are both quite aware of the plot. The reverse (fig. 775, b)*
shows the sequel. Kronos in the same pose as before, only with
staff instead of sceptre, has received the stone. And Rhea, her
mission accomplished, turns herself about, partly to conceal her
satisfaction, partly to give a message to the sympathetic Nike, who
hurries from the presence of Kronos. Zeus, as Hesiod said, ' was
soon like to overcome him by might and main5.'

Again, a red-figured pelike of c. 460—450 B.C., said to have come
from Rhodes and now at New York, represents the famous ruse as
conceived by 'the Nausikaa Painter'(?) (ng- 776)6. On the left
stands Rhea, one foot supported7 on a rock (was she not a
mountain-mother?) while she holds out the stone, convincingly
dressed and capped like a long-clothes baby, towards the expectant
Kronos. He stands on the right, raising one hand in amazement
and holding his sceptre in the other. Clearly this scene8 is but

1 See E. Pottier Vases antiques du Louvre 3m= Serie Paris 1922 p. 236 no. G 366.

2 A. Rapp in Roscher Lex. Myth. iv. 95 is over-sceptical when he says : ' Verfehlt ist
, auch der Versuch in den Vasenbildern Gazette archiol. I pi. 9 und 3 pi. 18 die Ubergabe

des Steins durch Rhea an Kronos zu erkennen; was de Witte fur den Stein halt, ist eine
eigentiimliche Verhttllung der Arme (vgl. ubrigens Petersen, Arch. Ztg. 37 S. 12).'

3 oi)/c oil), afxa rrj yc nai d/x0i7ro\oi 86' Sirovro (II. 3. 143, Od. 1. 331, 18. 207, and
similar passages). J. de Witte loc. cit. suggested that the two attendants of Rhea were

e nymphs Adrasteia and Ide, to whom along with the Kouretes she entrusted the infant
zeus (Apollod. r. 1. 6).

4 E. de Chanot 'Cronos, Rhea et Nice' in the Gaz. Arch. 1877 iii. 116 pi. 18 ( = my
S- 775. b). M. Mayer in Roscher Lex. Myth. ii. 1552 f. attempts to cast doubt on the

authenticity of this reverse design. But quite unjustifiably, as E. Pottier op. cit. p. 236
Points out ('des doutes non justifies et non verifies, car il n'avait pas examine roriginal').
Supra p. 929.

J- D. Beazley Attic red-figured Vases in American Museums Cambridge Mass. 1918
P' l22 (either by the Nausikaa Painter or by an associate), id. Attische Vasenmaler des
rMfigurigen Stils Tubingen 1925 p. 254 no. 3 ('Folgende Vasen sind den Werken des
'nanthemalers einerseits, andererseits denen des Nausikaamalers eng verwandt und
eisen vielleicht auf die Identitat der beiden Maler. Nausikaamaler = spater Oinanthe-
aler?'), fa Greek Vases in Poland Oxford 192S p. 44 n. 1 (such vases 'can hardly be
-P* apart from those of the Oinanthe Painter'), G. M. A. Richter Red-figund Athenian
es m the Metropolitan Museum of Art Yale Univ. Press 1936 i. 100 f. no. 72 pis. 75
~my fig. 776) and 173 (photograph of whole vase) ('by Nausikaa Painter (?)').
p An early example of ' the supported foot,' on which see supra p. 706 f. and
^Jacobsthal Die Melischen Reliefs Berlin—Wilmersdorf 1931 pp. 190—192 ('Das
s'v des hochauftretenden Fusses in friihklassischer Malerei').

fte scene on the reverse side of the New York pelike is not mythological at all, but

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