Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

Caldron of Apotheosis 219
Other writers confirm this account and enable us to trace it back
for more than four hundred years. Thus Tzetzes, the learned com-
mentator on Lykophron's Alexandra^ says :
' Dionysos too was honoured at Delphoi along with Apollon in the following
way. The Titans, having rent the limbs of Dionysos, gave them to Apollon his
brother, after dropping them into a caldron ; and Apollon put them away beside
the tripod, as is stated by KaUimachos and by Euphorion in the words
They dropped Bakchos the divine above the bowl on the fire^'
These passages prove, to my thinking, that the Thraco-Phrygian
myth of Dionysos had taken root at Delphoi at least as early as the
third century B.C., and that the caldron of apotheosis, an essential
feature of the myth, was then identified with the tripod of Apollon
himself If Aischylos two centuries earlier can make his Pythia
say ' Bromios too possesses the place^,' it will hardly be maintained
that we have here to do with a late and valueless tradition. The
burden of proof rests with those who contend that the Thraco-
Phrygian myth reached Delphoi later than the Thraco-Phrygian
god. Be that as it may, the tomb of Dionysos at Delphoi, like the
tomb of Zeus in Crete^ continued to be an object of interest till
Byzantine times^ Tatian indeed {c. 152 a.d.) confuses it with the
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