Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

30 The Tarentine cult of Zeus Kataibdtes
again borrowing his information from Klearchos, who was one of
his prime sources.
'This race of the lapyges,' he continues, 'is derived from Crete. Cretans
came to look for Glaukos and settled down here. Their descendants, forgetting
the orderly life of the Cretans, reached such a pitch of luxury, and subsequently
of insolence, that they were the first to paint their faces, to get front locks and
side locks of false hair, to wear flowered robes, and to deem work and labour a
disgrace. Ordinary citizens made their houses more magnificent than the
temples ; while the principal men of the lapyges, treating the deity with insult,
destroyed the statues of the gods out of the temples and bade them give place
to their betters. Wherefore they were struck by fire and bronze from the sky,
and the fame of it was spread abroad; for bolts from heaven forged of bronze
were long to be seen'. And to this very day all their descendants live shaven
to the skin and wearing the garb of mourners, in want of all the luxuries that
were theirs before.'
Now lapyx the epon}'m of the lapyges was commonly said to
hav^e been the son of Daidalos^; and there is a consistent tradition
to the effect that, when Minos was killed at Kamikos in Sikania,
the Cretans after an ineffectual attempt to take the town were
driven by stress of weather to land in lapygia, where they built
Hyria and became the lapyges Messapioi^ In view of this tra-
ditional connexion between the lapyges and the Cretans of the
Minoan age, it is interesting to find Athenaios giving a description
of the lapyges which with curious exactitude suits the ' Minoans.'
Their painted faces^ their artificial front locks^ and side locks*,
their flowered robes'', the magnificence of their houses as contrasted
with their shrines^ are all points of resemblance. Last but not
least, the ' bolts from heaven forged of bronze ' must surely be
^ The text is 8i6irfp i^ ovpavov paWdfievoi Trvpi kclI x^Xk^ Ta^TTjv 8i.e5o