Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

230 Pythagoras as Apollon reborn
these bear-stories^ it is reasonable to infer that Zdhnoxis was a
Thracian appellative of the new-born Zeus.
Again, Antonius Diogenes in his Marvels beyond Thoiile{s. i. A.D.^)
had, a propos of Pythagoras, included a story, which—as Porphyries
says'*—was by no means to be neglected :
' According to Diogenes, Mnesarchos was a Tyrrhenian by race, one of those
that inhabited Lemnos, Imbros, and Skyros. Starting from thence he visited
many different states and districts. And once upon a time he found an infant
laid beneath a white poplar-tree of great size and shapely growth. He stopped
and saw that the child lying on its back was looking up at the sky, staring
straight at the sun without ever winking its eyes. It had in its mouth a small
slender reed like a pipe ; and he saw to his surprise that it was nurtured by dew,
which dropped from the poplar. So, thinking that the child must have been
born of some divine parentage, he took it up from the ground. The boy grew
to manhood in Samos and was taken up by the Samian Androkles, who put him
in charge of his household. Mnesarchos, being quite well-to-do, brought up the
child under the name of Astraios along with his own three boys Eunostos,
Tyrrhenes, and Pythagoras the youngest, whom Androkles adopted as his son*.'
The fine poplar in a far-off land with a divine infant lying beneath
it at once recalls the remarkable poplar growing in the mouth
of the Idaean Cave^, where Zeus was born^—a spot to which
Pythagoras made pilgrimage'. Ability to stare straight at the sun
was characteristic of the eagle^ and might well mark an infant Zeus.
Finally, the name Astraios reminds us that the Cretan Zeus bore
the title Aste'rzos^. It is clear therefore that Diogenes wove into his
romance a neo-Pythagorean account of the Cretan Zeus.
If so, it would seem that Zalmoxis and Astraios, the two familiars
of Pythagoras, stand respectively for Thrace and Crete, and
that the sage in representing himself as an avatar of Apollon was
acting under the influence of the Thracian and Cretan cult of the
reborn Zeus. Such an influence was not out of place at Delphoi,
where the earliest priests of Apollon Delphinios had been Cretans
* See further J. J. Bachofen Der Bar in den Religionen Jes Alteriums Basel 1863,
S. Bochait //t'erosoicon ed. E. F. C. Rosenmiiller Lipsiae 1794 ii- 129— 149, J. Grimm
Teutonic Mythology trans. J. S. Stallybrass London 1883 ii. 667 f., E. H. Meyer Ger-
inanische Mythologie Berlin 1891 p. 103 f., M. W^ellmann in Pauly— Wissowa Real-Enc.
ii. 2759— 276'2, Schrader Reallex. p. 60, S. Reinach Cultes, mytkes ei religions Paris 1905
i. 21 f., 51, 55 ff., O. Keller Die antike Tierwelt Leipzig 1909 i. 175— 181.
2 W. Schmid in Pauly—Wissowa Rcal-Etic. i. 2616, W. Christ Geschichte der griechi-
schen Litteratur^ Mtinchen 1898 p. 816, Liibker Reallexfi p. 77.
^ Porph. V. Pyth. 10.
* Porph. V. Pyth. 10. Id. ib. 13 adds that Mnesarchos presented Astraios to Pytha-
goras, who saw to his training.
^ Supra i. 529. ^ Supra i. i5of., Append. B Crete.
' Supra i. 135, 646, 669. ^ Supra i. 104 n. i.
" Supra i. 545 ff., 664 n. 3, 733 f., 740.