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ZEUS.

lenic Zeus.

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ancient hymns and prayers of the Hindus the supreme Creator and Ruler of all worlds was invoked VI. The Helunder many names, all of which were regarded as denoting his power or his goodness. The entreaty for deliverance from sin and guilt is made to Varuna, and the worshipper finds comfort in the thought that he is the child of Dyaus-pitar, his father who is in heaven. However it may have been in earlier times with the ancestors of the Greek tribes, the Achaians spoken of in the Iliad and Odyssey had in like manner learnt to look upon Zeus, whose name represents the Sanskrit Dyaus, as the Father of gods and men; and in like manner the Zeus Pater of the Greeks reappears as the Jupiter of the Latins, and the All-father of the Teutons. But in Greece, as in India, there was growth, and therefore change, in the character of the deities; and according to the Theogonies or poems which trace the descent of the gods, there had been a time when Zeus was inferior to his father Kronos, and when even Kronos had not yet come into being. In the origins thus assigned to them there are, as we might well expect, the widest differences between one narrative and another. These mythical genealogies, which certainly do not belong to the earliest mythopoeic ages, could but express the thought of the time in which they grew up, as to the mode in which the outward world took shape and form. Thus in one version the first beings are Chaos and Gaia1 (earth), from whom springs Ouranos (Uranus), the Varuna of the Rig Veda, together with the Long Mountains and Pontos (the sea). In another, Gaia, or Gê, is the wife of Ouranos; and

This name clearly contains the root of a vast number of words denoting the power or the fact of production, this root being perhaps ga or gen; hence the Greek verbal form yéyaμev, and the nouns yévos, L. gens, yuvh, queen, quean, &c. It can scarcely be doubted that the reference to this family of words explains the Latin phrase in the form of marriage known as Coemptio, in which the wife says to her husband, Ubi tu Caius, ego Caia.' Cicero (pro Mur. 12) supposes the choice of name to be a mere accident (as with the English Doe and Roe); but this is a matter on which the judgment of a man who could deal practically with only one language was worth nothing.

2 Hes. Theog. 129.

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their children, Hyperion, Iapetos, and many others, are born before Kronos, the father of Zeus. These legends go on to tell us that Ouranos hunted the Kyklôpes (Cyclopes) with Brontê and Steropê (thunder and lightning), and other children of Gaia, into the seething abyss of Tartaros, and that Gaia, in her grief and anger, urged her other children to mutilate their father, and to set up Kronos instead upon his throne. Henceforth Kronos swallowed his children soon after each was born; nor could any have been saved had not Rhea, the mother of Zeus, anxious to preserve her child, given to her husband a stone to swallow, while Zeus was born and nourished in the care of Diktê, or Lyktos, or, as some said, on Ida.1

Zeus and
Prometheus.

In the strict meaning of his name, Zeus, who to the Teutonic tribes was known as Tiu, Tuisco, Zio, and Tyr, was the god who dwelt in the pure blue sky, the abode of light, far above the clouds or the mists of the lower atmosphere, which might sully its purity. As such, he is naturally born in the cave of Diktê, or Lyktos, a phrase as transparent as that which tells us that Phœbus sprang to

1 That this story, strange and coarse as it is, has reference to the consumption and reproduction perpetually going on in nature, is beyond all doubt. The hymn-writers of the Rig Veda were perfectly aware that a series of mornings and days made men old, although the mornings and days remained as young and fresh as ever; and for mere savages the passing away of months or moons would be a fact as indisputable as that of their continuance. Hence the being who consumes or swallows the moons (and this might be made to mean months, weeks, or days) must be regarded as reproducing, i.e. disgorging them. In other words, the story would refer to time and the effects of time; and as the impressions which would embody themselves in those stories might spring up in the minds of any tribes capable of thinking at all, the tales would belong to the province not of mythology but of folklore. The notion of time once given, the features of these tales would be determined by the modes of measuring time which might be in use in any given country. Thus in Grimm's German story of the wolf and the seven little goats, the wolf, which is the night or darkness, tries to swallow the seven kids, and actually swallows six. The seventh is hidden in the clockcase. In other words, the week is not quite run out; and before its close the mother of the goats, ripping the wolf's stomach, substitutes stones for the kids, who come trooping out, as the days of the week begin again to run their course. Here we have the Hesiodic notion of the stone swallowed by Kronos, with an idea distinctly suggested by the clocks of modern times; but the reference to the clock-case furnishes proof conclusive that the narrator of the story knew well the nature of the materials with which he was dealing. 2 II. 14. 288.

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life in Delos, or that Endymion slept in the cave of Latmos. No sooner, we are told, had he come to his full strength than he delivered the Kyklôpes (Cyclopes) from Tartaros, and obtained the aid of the hundred-handed giants, the Hekatoncheires, in his war against the Titans. In this struggle, according to the story followed by Æschylus, he had the help of Prometheus, son of Deukalion, and was thus able to dethrone his father, Kronos. But his gratitude was afterwards turned into hatred, from a cause which shows how completely the mythical Zeus was distinct from the Zeus whom the swineherd Eumaios worshipped, and of whom the Hesiodic poet thought when he spoke of the righteous ruler and judge of all mankind. Under the sway of Zeus, the lord of the glistening firmament, Prometheus. it is said, found the race of men grovelling in the lowest depths of misery, without clothing, without dwellings, without fire. From him they learnt the use of fire, which he stole from heaven, and brought to them in the hollow of a reed; and so began the new order of things in which they gradually groped their way into a condition more befitting creatures who have the power of thought and speech. For these great deeds done for the benefit of beings whom he hated or despised, Zeus condemned Prometheus to be chained on the rugged crags of Caucasus, where a vulture gnawed his liver, which grew as fast as it was devoured.

Zeus.

So soon as, in accordance with the meaning of the name, Zeus was regarded as the lord of the upper air, it became certain that the same process would go on in refer- The Olympian ence to other parts or aspects of the material world. Thus the story grew up that the Kyklôpes (Cyclopes) gave to Zeus a thunderbolt, to his brother Hades a helmet which made the wearer invisible, and to Poseidon a trident, and that, having received these gifts, the three gods cast lots, and

1 Esch. Prom. v. 450 et seq.

2 This is the Tarnkappe of the popular Teutonic stories.

the sovereignty of heaven fell to the portion of Zeus, that of the sea to Poseidon, and that of the lower regions to Hades. That there was no such chance in the distribution of their offices it is scarcely necessary to say: but it may be noted that this assignment of functions is based purely on physical considerations; and thus as the god dwelling on the heights of Olympos with the subordinate deities around him, Zeus, although invested with a majesty not to be invaded by others, is a being moved by very earthly appetites and emotions. It cannot, indeed, be said with truth that the Zeus of the Olympian hierarchy, whether in the Iliad and Odyssey or elsewhere, is the Zeus to whom prayer is addressed. Men could not seek for justice against those who wronged them in their persons or their families from a being whose actions exhibited the most ruthless disregard for the rights of others. The Zeus of the Olympian courts is partial, unjust, fond of rest and pleasure, changeable in his affections and unfaithful in his love, greedy, wrathful, and impure. The Zeus to whom the people pray is not only irresistible in might, but also just and righteous. Here, as in India, the religious convictions of the worshippers rose into a region immeasurably higher than that of their mythology. To both the name for the bright heaven had become a name for the One only God; but the old meaning of the word still clung to it,' and brought up images of the visible sky in its relation to the earth and its products, of its clouds, vapours, and storms. The phrases which described these changes might easily come to denote vile or shameful actions when applied to a being with human form and human feeling. Thus the earth had been spoken of as the bride of the sky, while the heaven was said to overshadow the earth with its love in every land. The necessary out

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This is strikingly shown in the Athenian prayer for rain, voov, & plλe Zeû, κατὰ τῆς ἀρούρας τῶν ̓Αθηναίων; and even more plainly in the words of the Latin poet, Adspice hoc sublime candens quem invocant omnes Jovem.' With the Latins 'malus Jupiter' remained an expression for bad weather, and the phrases 'sub dio vivere,' 'sub Jove frigido,' denoted time spent in the open air or in the cold.

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growth from such phrases was a multitude of stories of strange and lawless licence.

and spiritual

The antagonism thus caused between the physical and the spiritual Zeus was at first acquiesced in as a fact which must be accepted, and on which the people did The physical not care to fix their thoughts. Thus in the Zeus. Hesiodic poems the descent of the gods, their earthly loves and their gross actions, are brought out even more prominently than in the poems to which we give the name of Homer. Yet the poet can turn seemingly without an effort from the thought of such things to the idea of the pure and holy Zeus, who looks down from heaven to see if men will do justice and seek after God. As time went on, the contrast was felt more and more strongly. By some the thought that the gods must be good was regarded as a sufficient reason for disbelieving all stories to their discredit; by others these tales were considered to disprove their divinity, as Euripides said: 'If the gods do aught unseemly, then they are not gods at all;' others, again, rested content with the conviction that Zeus was a mere name by which they might speak of Him in whom we live and move, but which was utterly incapable of expressing, as our mind is of conceiving, His infinite perfection.

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As the deity, therefore, of the visible heaven, Zeus has his brides and his children in all lands. The greatest among those are Apollo and Artemis, Ares, Hermes, and The Olympian Athênê. These, with Poseidon, Hêrê, Hephaistos, hierarchy. Hestia, Dêmêtêr, Aphroditê, and Zeus himself, formed the body which in the days of the historian Thucydides was worshipped as the twelve gods of Olympos.2 This ordering of the gods is not found in the Greek tragic or lyric poets or in our Iliad or Odyssey. In these poems many of the deities are not nearly so important as they appear elsewhere, while in other traditions some are described as lower in character. This systematic arrangement of the heavenly Fragment. Belleroph. 300. : Thuc. vi. 64. 6.

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