Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

2 Zeus lightens, thunders, rains, etc.
snows/ or 'He lightens,' 'He thunders^' but— if pressed for an ex-
planation—would ascribe these actions to Zeus".
It was, therefore, a shock to old-fashioned piety, when philo-
sophers and sophists insisted that such phaenomena were brought
about by purely physical causes. A certain memorable scene in
The Clouds of Aristophanes^ represents Strepsiades, a member of
the old school, as being instructed in the new learning by Sokrates
Str. What !
d'you
call?
mean that Zeus is not god, Zeus in heaven, on whom we
Socr. Zeus, d'you say ? now don't talk drivel ; Zeus does not exist at all.
Str. What ! Who
Socr. Why the Clouds : I'll prove it to you by convincing argument.
makes the rain then? tell me that, and I shall be content.
Have you ever seen rain falling, when the clouds weren't passing by ?
If it's Zeus who rains, he ought to do it from a cloudless sky.
Str. That's a clever point, I grant you, neatly used to back your case.
Yet I thought once Zeus passed water through a sieve, when rain took
place.
But who is it then that thunders, when I cower and hide my face?
Socr. Why, the rolling clouds make thunder.
Str. What d'you mean ? that's blasphemy.
Socr. When they're teeming full of water and are forced across the sky,
Big with rain and bulging downwards, moving at a fearful rate.
Charging each against the next, they burst and crash with all their weight.
Str. But who is it drives them onwards ? do you think it's Zeus, or not ?
Socr. No, the atmospheric vortex.
Str. Vortex ! yes, I quite forgot :
Zeus does not exist, but Vortex rules instead of him to-day.
Philosophers and would-be philosophers left the man in the
street pretty much as they found him. His simple creed might be,
and was, exploded scores of times ; but he continued to believe in
it, just because his father and his grandfather and his great-grand-
father had done the same before him. He never took kindly to
Vortex^ and still talked in his unreasoning way of Zeus. If we
' Examples are given infra p. 3 n. 7.
^ Apollon. Dysk. de constr. or. p. loi, 16 ff. a propos of dcrTpdirTei. and the like says
7) Toia^Ti] ivipyeia rep Ad avair^fiweTCLi, cp. eL viag. p. 211, 57 ff. o\)hk yap Ppix'^ ^7'^)
ov5^ j3/)^X"5 '^'^1 d.Wd /3p^x^' '^'''- X""'^ff'
/3p^X^'
Tovriariv 6 ded^.
"^"i' darpaiTTeL 6 6e6s... orav 8^ epuiTi]iJ.aTiKws dTr-Q
' ^ Ppovrq. ; diari ov wpoffridriaL /cat to ewayo/xevov ; 5i6ti. eh idTiv 6 ravra iroiwv,
^ Aiistoph. 7iiil>. 366 ff. I quote the excellent rendering by A. D. Godley and
C. Bailey (Oxford 1905), supplementing it by the addition of line 373.
* Mr F. M. Cornford, however, points out to me that the vortex-theory of the philo-
sophers had at least some foundation in popular belief— witness the ancient and very
remarkable tablet from Tarragona [i/i/ra Append. G). Aristophanes' words {>ut6. 380 f.
Sn. iJKKTT, dXX' aidipLo^ Shos. ST. ATcos ; tovtL /x' eXeXij^ei, |
6
Zei}s ovk wv, dXX' avr^
avTov AIvos vvvl ^aaiXevwi') are meant to suggest not only SIvt) or Blvrfais, cosmic rotation,
but also the name of Zeus (schol. ad loc. tyyv^iv Vka^iv awb tov Alos rb 6i>ofj.a), with a sly
hit at divos, a round-bellied bowl (cp. ni/d. 1468 ff. ST. vai vac KaraiS^adriTi irarpi^ov