Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

784
Modifications in the shape
conqueror of the Greeks in northern India (? c. 130 B.C.), have for
obverse design Zeus enthroned, holding a sceptre in his left hand
and extending his right towards a small male figure, who seems
to be an embodiment of the thunderbolt (figs. 744, 745)'. This
humanised missile we may venture to name Keraunosl
Flames, wings, and spiral twist remained as characteristic traits
of the thunderbolt throughout the classical period. VirgiP works
all three into his description of Volcanus' smithy :
Iron the Cyclops forged in that great cave
Brontes and Steropes and bare-hmbed Pyracmon.
Thereof their hands had wrought a thunderbolt
Of such sort as the Sire oft hurls from heaven
To earth, pait burnished— part was yet to make.
Three rays of twisted rain, three more of cloud,
Three of red fire and the winged southern wind,
They blent with flashes fell and sound and fear
And fury with its still pursuing flames.
The Virgilian Cyclopes were fashioning their thunderbolt like
armourers at work on some complicated engine of destruction. It
was indeed natural that the sky-god's bolt should borrow some at
least of its features from weapons wielded by human hands. In
Italy and Sicily, as Jacobsthal* observed, the central spike of the
lotos, and likewise the lotos-bud, developed into a dagger-blade
(fig. 746)^ or an arrow-head (fig. 747)". Also in the same region
half arrow-heads or hooks came to be added on the side spikes of
the bolt (fig. 748)''. The earliest examples of such treatment are,
^ P. Gardner in the Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Greek and Scythic Kings pp. Iviii, 70
pi. 16, 9, id. Types of Gk. Coins p. 210 pi. 14, 24 ( = my fig. 744). In his description of
both plates Prof. Gardner speaks of a ' female figure ' ; but in Types of Gk. Coins p. 210
he tacitly corrects his own blunder and says :
' we see a male figure, evidently an im-
personation of the thunderbolt which is indeed not entirely transmuted into his form, but
partly appears over his head and at his sides. This is a very interesting invention of the
Indo-Greeks.' Fig. 745 is from another specimen in the British Museum.
^ Supra p. 1 1 ft". Whether the naked boy with a torch, who on the Naples
Vtomt\.\\e\x5-sarcop/iagus (Gerhard Ant. Bild^v. i. 304 ft", pi. 61, Welcker Alt. Denkm. ii.
286 ft", pi. 14, K. Bapp in Roscher Lex. Myth. iii. 3108 f. ) appears to be leaping down
from the head of Zeus towards Hephaistos, is rightly regarded as the thunderbolt personi-
fied (so E. Petersen in \he Jahrb. d. kais. deutsch. arch. Inst. 1910 xxv. 126) is very
doubtful.
•* Verg. Aen. 8. 424 fif.
* P. Jacobsthal op. cit. p. 21 f.
^ From Gerhard Etr. Spiegel iv. 10 f. pi. 282.
^ From Gerhard Etr. Spiegel m. 75 ff". pi. 74.
'' P. Jacobsthal op. cit. pp. 22, 43 n. 2. I figure the reverse of a bronze coin of
Kentoripai dating from the latter half of s. iii B.C. [Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Sicily p. 55
nos. 3— 6, Hunter Cat. Coins i. 177 nos. 2, 3 pi. 13, 2, 4—6, G. F. Hill Coitts of Ancient
Sicily London 1903 p. 219 pi. 14, 21, Head Hist, ftum.- p. 135).