Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

The double axe and Zeus L,abrdyndos 559
{X) The double axe and Zeus Kataibates.
We are, therefore, prepared to find that towns and districts for-
Minoans might centuries later connect Zeus
merly occupied by '
'
with the double axe that had belonged to his predecessor. This
seems to have been the case, for example, in south Italy. Tradition
and
derived the lapyges from the Cretan followers of king Minos ;
in lapygia '
bolts from heaven forged of bronze were long to be
seen.' The deity who hurled these bolts— ' fire and bronze from
the sky '—had a pillar-cult, and was called by the Tarentines Zeus
Kataibates^. A strong presumption is thus raised that the old
' Minoan '
sky-god had here passed on the double axe of bronze to
his Hellenic successor Zeus^
{rj) The double axe and Zeus Labrayndos, etc.
The same thing happened repeatedly in Asia Minor. Evidence
is forthcoming from Lydia, Karia, Kypros, and Kappadokia. Plu-
tarch propounds, as one of his Hellenic Questions'^, the following
' problem : Why does the image of Zeus Labradeiis in Karia bear
an uplifted double axe, and not a sceptre or a thunderbolt?' His
solution is this :
'Because Herakles slew Hippolyte, took her double axe along with the rest
of her weapons, and gave it as a gift to Omphale. The kings, who, after Oniphale,
reigned over Lydia*, used to carry it, receiving it in succession as a sacred heir-
loom, till Kandaules, disdaining to do so, gave it to one of his friends to carry^
But when Gyges revolted from him and made war against him, Arselis" came
from Mylasa' with a force to help Gyges, and slew Kandaules and his friend.
The double axe he took into Karia together with the rest of the spoils. He made
1 Supra pp. 2 9—31.
- Not improbably bronze axes, regarded as thunderbolts (C. Blinkenberg The Thunder-
weapon in Religion and Folklore Cambridge 191 1 p. 121), were from time to time dug up
in the locality. E.g. T. E. Peet The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy and Sicily Oxford
1909 p. 423 records the finding of a bronze winged axe in the terratnara at Taranto.
^ Plout. quaestt. Gr. 45 5ia rl rod Aa^pad^us Ai6s ev Kapla to dya\fj.a weXeKvv ripfiivov,
ovxi Se (TKrjTTTpov 77 Kepavvov, TreTrotTjrai
* See now Frazer Golden Bough'^: Adonis Attis Osiris^ i. 182 ff. ('The Divinity of
Lydian Kings').
5 G. Radet La Lydie et le viondt grec au temps des Mermnades (687—546) Paris 1893
pp. 88 f., i29f
^ M. Duncker Geschichte des Alterthums^ Leipzig 1878 i. 488 conjectured that'Apo-ijXts
was not a historical personage, but the name or epithet of the Zeus of Mylasa— 'eine
Vermuthung, die dadurch Gewissheit wird, dass Chars-El in den semilischen Sprachen
Beil des El, Beil Gottes bedeutet^ ["^Lassen Z. D. M. G. 10, 381].' This ingenious e.xplana-
tion, first put forward by C. Lassen in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen morgenldndischen Gesell-
schaftf.. 381, is rightly rejected by R. Schubert Geschichte der Kbnige von Lydien Breslau
1884 p. 32 f. and G. Radet op. cit. p. 136 n. 2.
^ A. Meineke corrects « MuX^wc codd. into e/c lA-vka-aiuv.