Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

786
The thunderbolt of Zeus
(7) The thunderbolt of Zeus and the trident of Poseidon.
The vase-painting just described raises a problem of consider-
able interest. Was the trident of Poseidon originally identical with
the thunderbolt of Zeus ?
It is commonly supposed that the trident was what Aischylos
calls it—the 'fish-striking device' of a sea-god^ Indeed it can
hardly be doubted that classical antiquity as a whole viewed the
trident in this way-. But the point is not, what the Greeks and
Romans of the classical age took the trident to be, but what it
originally was. And here there is room for divergence of opinion.
In the middle of last century F. G. Welcker'' argued that the
trident, properly considered, was not a mere fish-spear, but rather a
sign and symbol that Poseidon was lord over a third portion of the
world. Welcker, who usually took a sane view of facts, has here
been deserted by his better judgment. He is following the erroneous
guidance of Plutarch and other allegorists of Graeco- Roman times*.
H. B. Walters^ in 1893 struck out a new line of investigation.
Observing that Poseidon's trident, as represented on votive pinakes
or terra-cotta tablets found at Penteskuphia near Corinth and
referable to the period 650— 550 B.C.**, was often, especially on the
earlier examples, shaped like a lotos, he inferred that the art-type
of the trident had been developed out of the art-type of a lotiform
sceptre. Poseidon—he suggested—was at first simply Zeus in his
maritime aspect. Both deities were then entitled to bear the sceptre.
But by a gradual process of differentiation Poseidon's sceptre was
transformed into a trident, this transformation being prompted by
another of the god's attributes, namely his tunny-fish. Thus the
p. 579 ff. pi. 3, 16, Reinach Rep. Vases i. 373, 2, Overbeck Gr. Kunst?nyth. Zeus
p. 260 ff.), because it appears to have been, not merely extensively restored, but funda-
mentally transformed. According to K. Wernicke (Miiller—Wieseler—Wernicke Ant.
Denkm. ii. i. 40 f. pi. 4, i), its reverse showed originally three bearded men with long
thorn-sticks : this commonplace genre scene the forger altered into a mythological group
of deep significance, by giving each man a lotiform thunderbolt with dagger-blade ends,
two of them a very suspicious lightning-flash, and the third a trident ! Unfortunately the
vase itself has disappeared, so that Wernicke's contention cannot be proved : still, it is all
too probable, and the vase-painting must remain suspect.
1 Aisch. s. c. Th. 130 f. ff' I'tttfios irovTotiiSwv dva^ ]
Ixdv^bXifi
ixaxo-vq. ^oanSav.
^ See e.g. Preller— Robert Gr. Myth. i. 570, F. Durrbach in Daremberg— Saglio
Diet, Ant. iv. 60.
3 Welcker Gr. Gotterl. i. 628 ff".
• Plout. de Is. et Os. 76, schol. Aisch. P. v. 922, Serv. in Verg. Aen. i. 133, Myth.
Vat. 3. 5. I, 3. 6. 22.
® H. B. Walters ' Poseidon's Trident' in ihtjourn. Hell. Stud. 1893 xiii. 13 ff.
^ Furtwangler Vasensaminl. Berlin i. 47 ff. nos. 347—955, Friinkel in the Ant.
Denkm. i. 3 f. pis. 7, 8.
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