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)

93 8 The stone of Kronos

'As you leave the tomb of Neoptolemos,'
says Pausanias1, 'and pass on up the hill you
come to a stone of no great size. On this they
pour olive oil every day, and as each festival
comes round they put upon it wool of the
unspun sort. There is also a belief with regard
to it that this stone was given to Kronos
instead of the child and that Kronos spewed
it out again.'

The stone oiled and clad in wool was
certainly a battylos and possibly, as
Sir James Frazer2 and others3 have
conjectured, an aerolite. What it looked
like we know from a silver simpulum
with gilded details, found in 1633 at
Wettingen near Basel4, which is
decorated with the seven deities pre-
siding over the days of the week5
(fig. 780). Kronos, the god of Saturday,
stands beside a pillar topped by an
oval stone: this can be none other than
his Delphic monument.

1 Paus. 10. 24. 6 ciravafiavri Si airb rod piurpnaTos
(sc. NeoirTo\£[Aov rov 'A%iAAews) \i&os iarlv od p-iyas •
rovrov Kal e\awv bayptpai Karax^ovai Kal Kara eopr-qv
eKaarriv gpia iiriridiacn to dpyd' lari 8£ Kal S6^a es
avrbv, 8o6i}vaL Kpovip rov \Wov dvrl rov 7rai56s, Kal

avdis ripieaev avrbv 6 Kpovos.

2 Frazer Pausanias v. 355 (' Perhaps the sacred
stone at Delphi may have been meteoric).'

3 E.g. F. Miinter Antiquarische Abhandlungen
Kopenhagen 1816 p. 277, Gruppe Gr. Myth. Rel.
PP- 773> 775> K. Ttimpel in Pauly—Wissowa Real-
Enc. ii. 2781 ('die Aerolithennatur geniigt zur
Erklarung des griechischen Mythos').

*. M. Merian M[artini] Z[eilleri\ Topographia
Helvetia, Rhcetica, et Valesice. Franckfurt am Mayn
1654 p. 58 with fig. 6, F. Keller in the Mittheilungen
der antiquarischen Gesellschaft in Zurich 1864 xv.
133 ff. pis. 13 and 14, 1, J. de Witte in the Gaz.
Arch. 1879 v. 1 f. pi. 1 (part of which = my fig. 780),
M. Mayer in Roscher Lex. Myth. ii. 1,522 and 1568 f.
with fig. 17, W. H. Roscher ib. iii. 2539 fig. 2,
Reinach Rip, Reliefs iii. 525 no. 1.

6 Supra i. 753, ii. 69 f. fig. 28, iii. 209 f. with
figs. 128 and 129.