Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

Preface Xlll
I incline to think that a full treatment of any of the greater Greek
divinities, such a treatment as must ultimately be accorded to
them all, properly demands the co-ordinated efforts of several
workers.
Be that as it may, in this instalment of my book I have traced
the evolution of Zeus from Sky to Sky-god and have sought to
determine the relations in which he stood to the solar, lunar, and
stellar cults of the Mediterranean basin. I need not here anticipate
my conclusions, since the volume opens with a Table of Contents
and closes with a summary of results. But I would warn my
readers that the story runs on from Volume I to Volume 1 1, and that
the second half of it is, for the history of religion in general, the
more important. Zeus god of the Bright Sky is also Zeus god of
the Dark Sky ; and it is in this capacity, as lord of the drenching
rain-storm, that he fertilises his consort the earth-goddess and
becomes the Father of a divine Son, whose worship with its rites of
regeneration and its promise of immortality taught that men might
in mystic union be identified with their god, and thus in thousands
of wistful hearts throughout the Hellenic world awakened longings
that could be satisfied only by the coming of the very Christ
To some it may be a surprise that I have not made more use
of ethnology as a master-key wherewith to unlock the complex
chambers of Greek religion. I am far from underestimating the
value of that great science, and I can well imagine that the
mythology of the future may be based on ethnological data. But,
if so, it will be based on the data of future ethnology. For at
present ethnologists are still at sixes and sevens with regard to the
racial stratification of ancient Greece. Such a survey as K. Penka's
Die vorhellenische Bevblkerung Griechenlands (Hildburghausen 191 1 )
shows that progress is being made but it also shows the ; danger of
premature constructions. Hypotheses that stand to-day may be
upset to-morrow ; and to build an edifice on foundations so insecure
would be seriously to imperil its stability.
I shall therefore be
content if certain ethnological conclusions can be drawn, as I believe
they can, from the materials here collected, materials that have
be taxed with
been arranged on other principles.
I Again, may
an undue neglect of anthropological parallels.
In defence I might
plead both lack of knowledge and lack of space.
But, t be honest,
I am not always satisfied that similarity of performance implies
similarity of purpose, and I hold that analogies
taken from a
contiguous area are much more likely to be helpful than analogies