Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

726 Gradual elimination of the thunderbolt
to the terror of would-be perjurers. Pausanias was impressed by
the sight
' the image of Zeus in the Council House is of all the images of Zeus the best calculated
to strike terror into wicked men : it bears the surname of the God of Oaths,
and holds a thunderbolt in each hand. Beside this image it is the custom for the
athletes, their fathers and brothers, and also the trainers, to swear upon the cut
pieces of a boar that they will be guilty of no foul play in respect of the Olympic
games. The athletes take an additional oath, that for ten successive months
they have strictly observed the rules of training. Also those who examine the
boys or the foals which are entered for the races swear that they will decide
justly and will take no bribes, and that they will keep secret what they know
about the accepted or rejected candidate. I forgot to ask what they do with the
boar after the athletes have taken the oath. With the ancients it was a rule that
a sacrificed animal on which an oath had been taken should not be eaten by
man. Homer proves this clearly. For the boar, on the cut pieces of which
Agamemnon swore that in good sooth Briseis was a stranger to his bed, is represented
by Homer as being cast by the herald into the sea :
He spake, and cut the boar's throat with pitiless bronze.
Talthybius lightly wheeled and threw the boar
Into the great deep of the gray sea, a food for fishes.
its right, and very ingeniously compares a bronze in the Baduitt collection at St Moritz
in Switzerland (Reinach Rep. Stat. ii. 5 no. 9 = 017 fig. 662).
There is, therefore, a good deal to be said for G. Wissowa's con-
tention (in Roscher Lex. Myth. iv. 318) ' dass Semo Sancus Dius
Fidius in der Kaiserzeit (die Inschriften stammen elwa aus der
Zeit der Antonine) besonders als Blitzgott verehrt wurde.' But,
if so, I would suggest that his title Fidius meant originally 'the
Cleaver' (c^.Jindn,fidi, h\-fidus, etc.) and was only later, by dint
of popular etymology, associated with fides. The same god was
in Christian times the subject of another curious confusion. For
lust. Mart. apol. i. 26, i. 56 (followed by Iren. c. haeres. i. 23. i,
Tert. apol. 13, Euseb. hist. eccl. 2. 13. 3,
2. 14. •,, Kyrill. of
Jerusalem catech. 6. 14 (xxxiii. 561 A—B Migne), Aug. de
haeres. i (xlii. 25 Migne), Theodoret. haeret. fab. i. i (Ixxxiii.
344 B Migne)) declares that a statue on the Tiber-island dedicated
SIMflNI AEH SATKin was an effigy of Simon
Magus (see e.g. G. Salmon in .Smith—Wace Diet. Chr. Biogr. iv.
682), who was worshipped together with his consort the harlot
Helene under the guise of Zeus and Athena (Iren. c. haeres. r. 23. 4, Hippol. ref. haeres.
6. 20 p. 256 Duncker— Schneidewin, Epiphan./a«ar. i. 21. 3, Aug. de haeres. i (xlii. 25
Migne)).
Fig. 662.
lupiter lurarius, worshipped at Rome on the island in the Tiber (Dessau op. eit.
no. 3038 (in a pavement of opus Signinum, beneath the monastery of S. Giovanni
Calibita, figured by F. Ritschl in the Corp. inscr. Lat. i Tab. lithogr. lix, A) Q,. Volcaci.
C. f. har(uspex) de stipe lovi lurario [mjonimentom) and at Brixia in Cisalpine Gaul
(Dessau op. cit. no. 3037 I.O.M. |
lur(ario)
|
d(e)
c(onscriptorum) s(ententia)), was
perhaps akin to Dius Fidius, who is known to have had a cult on the Tiber-island
(E. Aust in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. v. 1246). M. Besnier Vile Tib^rine dans
Pantiquiti Paris 1902 p. 249 ff. would identify lupiter lurarius with Vediovis—a view
somewhat too decisively rejected by H. Jordan—C. Huelsen Topographic der Stadt Rom
im Alterthum Berlin 1907 i. 3. 636 n. 37.