Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

2^6 Dionysos displaced by Apollon
Towards the close of the fourth century Servius a propos of Aeneas
and his comrades, whom Virgil had described as worshipping the
Delian Apollo with bent heads\ remarks :
' We
should realise that, in accordance with the character of the deity ad-
for some powers
dressed, the worshippers look sometimes down, sometimes up ;
are heavenly, others earthly, others a blend of both. Hence now, when beseeching
Apollo, they turn towards the ground, since he is at once himself and
Sol and Father Liber, who descended to the dead—as Horace puts it : " Cer-
berus saw thee and harmed thee not^." So they do well to turn towards the
ground : it is from the ground that oracular responses come to them, and Apollo
is known even to the dead below^.'
Elsewhere, commenting on Virgil's apparent equation of the sun
and moon with Liber and Ceres^ Servius attributes the same unita-
rian doctrine to the Stoics :
' The Stoics hold that there is but one god and one goddess, and that it is
the self-same power which is called by various names according to its functions
and activities. Hence, on the one hand, they identify Sol, Liber, and Apollo ;
on the other, Luna, Diana, Ceres, luno, and Proserpina. Virgil— so they maintain—has
here invoked Liber and Ceres in place of Sol and Luna^'
Again, Servius cites a similar view from a neo-Platonic source
' But, according to Porphyrios' book entitled The Sun, it is clear that the
power of Apollo is threefold, and that we should identify Sol in heaven, Father
Liber on earth, Apollo under the earth. And this is why we see three attributes
grouped about his effigy—the lyre which represents to us heavenly harmony,
(TvyKpore'icrdai M. m.) ttjv wavriyvpiv vevcov 5i Kai x^P"' '''oh \6yois, irapa (rod {irapd