Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

Thunder as a sound independent of Zeus 827
§ 4. Zeiis and the Thunder,
(a) Thunder as a sound independent of Zeus.
Thunder was sometimes, perhaps originally \ venerated as
an independent phenomenon, not connected, or at least not ex-
pressly connected, with the name of Zeus. Thus at Bathos in
Arkadia, where—according to local tradition—the battle of the
gods and giants took place, sacrifices were offered to Lightnings,
Storms, and Thunders-. Similarly the writer of the proem to the
Orphic Hymns addresses his prayer to ' Winds, Thunders, and
parts of the four-pillared World-'.'
This conception of Lightnings and Thunders 2^% Augenblicksgotter
has left a trace of itself in a custom common to both Greeks and
Romans. When a lightning-flash was seen, folk at once made a
loud smacking noise with .* their lips^ Why Pliny seems to have
thought that the worshipper was thus, so to speak, blowing a kiss
to his god: 'the nations by common consent,' he says, 'adore the
Lightnings with smacking sounds^' More probably the sounds in
question were prophylactic*^ and meant to avert the danger of being
struck by the lightning'. To the same primitive stage of formless
fear belongs one of the strange taboos^ by which the wife of the
^ So H. Usener in the Rhein. Mns. 1905 Ix. 13 { = id. Kleine Schriften Leipzig—Berlin
191 3 iv. 482). See further supra p. 13 n. i.
'^ Paus. 8. 29. I QvovoLv ^ X(TTpa.Traus avTodi Kai QveWais re Kai Bpovrais with the notes
of Sir J. G. Frazer, H. Hitzig and H. BUimner. A. G. Bather and V. W. Yorke in the
Joiirn. Hell. Stud. 1892— 3 xiii. 231 attribute the localisation of the Gigantomachy to the
prevalence of earthquakes, the existence of an intermittent spring, the frequent firing of
peat-fields, and the finding of mammoth-bones.
3 Orph. ixixy] Trpbs Movcraiov 38 f. (quoted supra p. 14 1 n. i).
* Aristoph. vesp. 626 Kh.v a.