Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

The Elysian Way 39
There is a road aloft in the clear heaven,
Milk-white and therefore named the Milky Way.
Here go the gods to the great Thunderer's house
And royal home. To right and left the halls
Of high-born deities fling wide their doors.
The populace in diverse spots may dwell ;
But on this front the denizens of heaven
Puissant and proud have pitched their own abode
Ovid's celestial city is doubtless made to the pattern of Rome
viam, quae me post vincula corporis aegri |
ventosae superat vaga nubila lunae |
quadriiugo penetrat super aera curru |
qua
in
sublime ferat, puri qua lactea caeli | semita
proceres abiere pii quaque integer olim [
raptus
Elias et solido cum corpore praevius Enoch. And
Dracontius of Carthage (end o( s. v a.d.) would raise the brave man to the sky along the
same starry track : Drac. Ronml. 5. 323 ff. his quartus (so F. Biicheler for quintiis)
adesto |
virtutis
ratione fide pietate vigore |
possessuie
polos, scandens qua lacteus axis |
vertitur, aetherii qua se dat (so F. von Duhn for sedat C. Rossberg cj. candet) circulus orbis |
lunarisque globus qua volvitur axe tepenti j
aut certe qua Phoebus agit super astra iugales :
|
sidera sic capies, poteris sic astra mereri. Cp- Hieron. episL 23. 3 (xxii. 426 Migne) ille [sc.
the husband of Lea)... nunc desolatus et nudus non in lacteo caeli palatio, ut uxor mentitur
infelix, sed in sordentibus tenebris. These are but Christianised versions of a belief that
must have been wide-spread in later classical times— witness e.g. an elegiac epitaph from
Salonae : Corp. inscr. Lat. iii Suppl. no. 9631, 2f. = F. Biicheler Carmina Latina
epigraphica Lipsiae 1897 ii. 685 f. no. 1438, 17 f. sede beatorum recipit te lacteus orbis I
e gremio matris : hoc
tua digna tides. The artistic evidence, though considerably later, is
not devoid of interest. A twelfth-century manuscript of Germanicus at Madrid (cod.
Matrit. A 16), with coloured pictures in the scholia, represents the circulus lacteus as
a hoop held by a half-draped female, who bears aloft a draped female, the divinised soul
(G. Thiele Antike Himmelsbilder Berlin 1898 p. 147 fif. fig. 64 = my fig. 15). The same
design with slight variations is found two centuries afterwards in the Vienna manuscript
of a Latin prose work on astronomy (cod. Vindob. 2352)
: the starry circle is here more
recognisable, the draped soul on its semi-draped supporter is less so, the apotheosis-type
being ill understood (G. Thiele op. cit. p. (49 fig. 65 = my fig. 16).
' Ov. met. (. 168 ff. est via sublimis, caelo manifesta sereno ; | lactea
plebs
candore notabilis ipso. | hac iter est superis ad magni tecta Tonantis \
dextra laevaque deorum | atria nobilium valvis celebrantur aperti.s. |
regalemque
nomen habet,
domum.
habitat diversa
locis: hac fronte (sic codd. A.N.P.T., a (in rasura)/ro;;./