Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

Thunder as a sound uttered by Zeus 829
which has dropped inside a willow-tree, all blackened by lightning.
She lowers him into the hollow trunk, where he finds nothing but
snakes, and refuses to draw him up :
' " Now thou art in, my pretty youth, forth shalt thou come, ah, never !
For I'm the Lamia of the Sea, devourer of the Heroes !
"And I, I am the Lightning's Son, I'll lighten, and will burn thee !"
She of the Lightning was afraid, and up again she drew him'.'
Even more suggestive of a Sondergott is the question put to
Mr J. C. Lawson by an aged crone, who was rain-making on the
One
edge of the cliff in Thera {Santorini). ' She knew
' and the god below,' but
the god above
thing she could not make out—who
was the god that caused the thunder; did I know?^'
{b) Thunder as a sound uttered by Zeus.
Usually, however, thunder was brought into some direct con-
nexion with Zeus. The modern mind, steeped in Semitic thought^
readily conceives thunder as the voice of God*. But this was not a
classical conception. Thunder was at most an ominous sound pre-
ceding divine speech. Thus, when Oidipous the aged wanderer
of the Sophoclean play is about to be translated, Zeus Chthonios
thunders ; after which there is silence for a while, and then the god
cries in ringing tones :
Oidipous, Oidipous, why tarry we
To go ? Too long already they delay ^ !
Phaedrus also, describing a scene on the Roman stage, says
The curtain dropped, the thunder was rolled down.
And the gods spoke as they are wont to speak*'.
But, though the Greeks of the classical age did not regard thunder
as the articulate voice of Zeus, they thought of it sometimes in a
more homely fashion as an inarticulate sound proceeding from his
bodyl
1 L. M. J. Garnett—J. S. Stuart-Glennie Greek Folk Poesy London 1896 i. 103 ff. (from
G. Ch. Chasiotes HvWoyi) tuiv Kara ttjj' "HTreipof SyiixotlkQiv dafiaruu Athens 1866
p. 137 f.). Cp. N. G. Polites loc. cit. p. 10.
''
p. 49 f.
J. C. Lawson Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion Cambridge 1910
^ Job 37. 5 'God thundereth marvellously with his voice' (cp. ib. 37. 4,40. 9, Ps. 77. 18,
104. 7, John 12. 29, Rev. 10. 3 f , 14. 2, 19. 6). E. B. Tylor Primitive Culture^ London
1 89 1 ii. 264 : 'Among certain Moslem schismatics, it is even the historical AH, cousin of
Mohammed, who is enthroned in the clouds, where the thunder is his voice,' etc.
E.g. R. Browning An Epistle sub : fin.
' So, through the thunder comes a human
voice,' F. W. H. Myers Saint /'rtz^/ London 1887 p. 41 ' Lo if some strange intelligible
thunder |
Sang to the earth the secret of a star.'
5 Soph. 6. C. 1604 ff.
"
" Phaedr. 5. 7. 23 f.
''
See the conversation between Strepsiades and Sokrates in Aristoph. nub. 382 ff.,
which is probably based upon folk-belief (cp. Strab. 675, Sen. nat. quaestt. 5. 4. 2).