Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

88 Magic [ch.
cast down ;
the lightning is the hurled fire (iraXrov trvp). Pallas
then is but another form of Keraunos—the thunderbolt hurled.
According to ancient thinking, that which slays can save ; so the
Palladion which was the slayer became the Saviour, the Shield.
In the well-known fresco from Mycenae 1 in Fig. 14 we see the
Shield, half humanized, as the object of an actual cult; before it is
a portable altar, to either side a woman worshipper. But it is not
the goddess Pallas Athena who lends sanctity to the Palladion, it
is the sanctity of the Palladion that begets the godhead of Pallas
Athena.
This question of the sanctity of the weapon itself as a vehicle
of mana and an extension of man's personality is important for
our adequate understanding of the thunder- cult among the Greeks.
The Greek of classical days normally conceived of thunder not as
a vague force but as a definite weapon, a bolt wielded by Zeus.
Hesiod's great account of a thunderstorm finishes thus 2 :
Turmoil and dust the winds belched out and thunder
And lightning and the smoking thunderbolt,
Shafts of great Zeus.
Here and elsewhere we have three factors in a thunderstorm,
thunder itself, the noise heard (/Spovr/]), lightning, the flash seen
{arepoirr)), and a third thing, icepavvo*;, w r hich we translate
' thunderbolt.' All three are shafts, icrfXa, of mighty Zeus. Mighty
Zeus we ma}' dismiss. He is the product of a late anthropo-
morphism, but the three sorts of 'shaft' mentioned are interesting.
Thunder is a reality, a sound actually heard, lightning no less a
reality, actually seen, but the third shaft—the thunderbolt ? There
is no such thing. Yet by a sort of irony it is the non-existent
thunderbolt that Greek art most frequently depicts 3 .
The word translated ' shafts,' Krjka, is an interesting one. It
is used only in the plural and of the weapons of a god, and twice
it occurs in descriptions of the weather. In the Hesiod passage
1 "Ecp-qneph "Apx- 1887, PI. x. 2.
2 Hes. Theog. 708
aiiv 5' avepLoi evoalv re KovirjP t ia