Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

§ 3. Zeiis and the Lightning.
Zeus Keraunds 1
(a) Lightning as a flame from the Burning Sky.
At the very moment when the sky was darkest Zeus vindicated
his character as 'the Bright One.' The brilliant flash that glittered
for an instant against the lowering storm sufficiently proved his
presence and his power.
The Homeric poems use the same set of words to describe
aither, sun, moon, stars, lightning, fire. From which fact it has
been fairly inferred that in popular belief lightning was made of the
same material as aither, etc.—was, indeed, but a flame from the
flaming sky^ Here, as elsewhere, popular belief seems to have left
its impress on philosophy ; for Anaxagoras regarded lightning as
a veritable streak oi aither, a fragment of the burning sky that had
fallen into the lower stratum of aer or cloudy air-, and the physicist
Milon distinguished two species of lightning, diurnal and nocturnal,
holding that the former was due to the action of the sun, the latter
to that of the stars, upon water^. Nay more, the very word astrape,
the ordinary Greek term for ' lightning,' itself bears witness to the
conviction that the electric flash was akin to all other dstra, sun,
moon, stars, or Saint Elmo's fire^
Another name for the lightning was keraunds, the ' destroyer'.'
This is usually translated by the word ' thunderbolt,' but must not
be taken to denote a solid missile of any sort. It means nothing
more than the bright white flash in its destructive capacity.
i. Zeus Keraunds.
Now, if the lightning-flash was part and parcel of the aither or
burning sky, it was part and parcel of Zeus. For Zeus in his early
' O. Gilbert Die nteteorologischen Theorien des griechischen Alleriums Leipzig 1907
pp. 20 f., 619.
- Id. ib. p. 622 n. I citing Aristot. vieteor. 2. 9. 369 b 14 ff., Aet. 3. 3. 4, Senec. nat.
qiiaestt. 2. 12. 3, 2. 19.
' Stob. eel. I. 29. 3 p. 238, 13 ff. Wachsmuth, O. Gilbert op. cit. p. 637 n. r.
* Plat. Crat. 409 C rb. S' acrrpa ioiKe r^s do-rpaTr^s iirwvvfdav ix^'-" k.t.X., et. tnag.
p. 159, 57 fF., et. Gud. p. 86, 32 ff., Eustath. vi II. p. 786, 15 f. Modern philologists accept
the connexion : L. Meyer Ilaiidb. d. gr. Etyui. i. 1 79 d/i. Worterb. d. Gr. S/>r.^ pp. 59
f. dffTTjp and da-Tpa-rrT}, Boisacq Diet. itym.
de la Langue Gr. p. 92 darpdir-r) {sic). See further Plin. nat. hist. 2. 82 and 191.
^ Kepauv6s is connected with KipcLL^nv, 'to destroy,' by L. Meyer op. cit. ii. 362,
Prellwitz op. cit. pp. 19, 217, Boisacq op. cit. pp. 435, 440. These authorities cp. Sanskrit
fdru-k, 'dart'; Gothic hairus. Old Norse hiorr. Old Saxon hern-, 'sword'; Middle
Irish ace. pi. coi7-e, 'swords,'— which forms presuppose an Indo-Europaean *keru-s,
' flint dagger' (?), but do not warrant the inference that the Greeks originally identified
the lightning-flash with the thunder-stone (on which see itifra § 3 (c)).