Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

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Zeus Keraunobolos^ Keraunios
as king' with purple robe, silver sceptre, and regal diadem'^ was a
Cilician by birth, and had perhaps brought the cult of the lightninggod
with him from Asia Minor.
In view of the foregoing examples it may be maintained that
the Graeco-Roman age witnessed, not indeed a recrudescence of the
old zoistic conception of Zeus Keraunos^, but the rise and spread
of a new theistic conception—that of Zeus Keraunios, a deity too
sublime to be represented in human form-*, whose potency might
yet be inferred from the shape of his dreaded weapon. In a word,
the thunderbolt, once a primitive fetish, had become, not merely
the attribute of a human, but the symbol of a superhuman, power.
At Tegea in Arkadia there have from time to time been found
numerous small four-sided pillars of Doliana marble, capped in
each case by a diminutive pyramid and often inscribed with the
An eagle on a thunderbolt is the device of a sling-bullet published by W. Vischer
' Antike Schleudergeschosse ' in his A'leine Schriftcn Leipzig 1878 ii. 262 f. no. 32
pi. I4 = G. Fougeres loc. cit. fig. 3626 (with inscription [AJHMHTPIOY, perhaps
Demetrios Poliorketes).
1 Appian. Mithr. 59.
2 Flor. 2. 7. 10.
^ A fragmentary relief from Emesa (Hotns), now at Brussels (F. Cumont Catalogue
des sculptures ^f inscriptions antiques {monume?its lapidaires) des Mtisies Royaux du
Cittquantenaire- Bruxelles 1913 p. 68 ff. no. 55 fig.: height o"4i'", breadth o"32'"),
represents a series of at least four Syrian deities, from left to right (a) a divinity of whom
one foot only remains ; (1^) a god in Roman military costume, with a spear in his right
hand, a thunderbolt (?) in his left, and a rayed nimbus round his head ; (