Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

The double axe and Zeus Labrdy?idos 583
Poteiddn, Poseidon, etc. to denote 'Zeus in the Water' (pStos), arguing
that, when rain fell, the primitive Greeks believed Zeus to be present
in the rain; that, when the rain collected into streams and rivers,
they still held Zeus to be in the drinking-water ; and that, when the
rivers ran into the sea, they looked upon the sea itself as permeated
with Zeus. In 1904^ I re-stated the same argument and sought to
reinforce it by a variety of pleas, which need not here be specified.
But the proposed derivation of Poteiddn, Poseidon, etc. was not free
from improbabilities and was rejected by O. Gruppe in 1908-. In-
deed, I had myself by that time begun to entertain serious doubts
of it. Shortly afterwards it occurred to me that Potei-, Posei-, etc.,
the first element in the compound, might be more convincingly
connected WxXh posis, 'lord,' the whole name Potei-Ddn^ or the like
meaning 'Lord Zeus' just as the Homeric pdtnia Here* meant 'lady
Hera.' My friend Dr P. Giles, to whom I submitted this notion, not
only gave it his general approval, but told me that it had been
partially anticipated by German experts. K. Brugmann in the second
edition of his Grwidriss (191 1)^ was in fact able to cite the opinions
of two other notable philologists, O. Hoffmann and P. Kretschmer.
Hoffmann in 1906'' had derived the various forms of Poseidon's
in seinem zvveiten Theile nichts anderes als die dialektische Form Dan = Zeus, wiihrend
der erste Theil des Namens die Beziehung auf das feuchte Element tragt. Poseidon =
Potidan ist also Zeus in Beziehung zum Nass, zum himmlischen Nass. Erst im Laufe der
Zeit hat sich diese Beziehung auf die Gewiisser des Himmels in diejenige auf die Gewasser
der Erde und hier speziell des Meers umgestaltet,' F. Durrbach in Daremberg— Saglio
Diet. Ant. iv. 59 ' D'apres une autre interpretation, plus generalement acceptee, la
premiere partie du nom est formee du theme tto, qu'on retrouve dans iroTo.tx.b^, Trdros,
irdaLs, et qui aurait la signification de liquide, eau ; la fin du mot est un simple suffixe
ou encore elle recele peut-etre le nom de Zfi^s (Arji', L6.v), en sorte que Poseidon, c'est le
Zeus de I'element humide. Ces tentatives d'etymologie ne sont qu'ingenieuses, et on ne
saurait les prendre comme point de depart pour I'exegese.'
^ Folk-Lore 1904 xv. 267 ff. , 277 ff.
^ Gruppe Myth. Lit. 1908 p. 600. Id. in the Neiie JaJu-b. f. klass. Altertum 1918 xli.
296 treats ' Potida als vorgriechische, wenn auch vielleicht nicht kretische Benennung des
im Regenzauber angerufenen Gottes.'
* The nom. sing. ^a.v was used by the Boeotians in place of Zevs {supra p. 342 n. o)
and Boiotia was one of the oldest and most important centres of Poseidon-worship
(Aristarchos ap. et. mag. p. 547,
i6f. ^ BotojTta '6\r\ iepa Ilo