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

iv] Weather-daemon and Olympian 109
The indigenous weather-daemon Picas and the incoming
thunderer Jupiter have similar and therefore somewhat incom-
patible functions ; it is inevitable that their relations will be
somewhat strained, a modus vivendi has to be found. One of two
things will happen. If you are a mild, peace-loving Pelasgian with
a somewhat obscurantist mind, you will say, 'Ah! here are two
great powers, Picus and Jupiter or Zeus, doing the same great
work, making the rain to fall, the sun to shine, commanding the
thunder; Picus' has 'entered the service of Zeus,' Picus is 'the son
of Zeus,' Picus is 'a title of Zeus 1 ,' or best of all, are they not both
one and the same?' Picus himself, according to the Byzantine
syncretizers, knew that he was really Zeus. ' When he had handed
over the western part of his kingdom he died at the age of 120,
and when he was dying he gave orders that his body should be
deposited in the island of Crete, and that there should be an
inscription :
Here lies dead the Woodpecker who also is Zeus 2 .
But it may be that you are of sterner mould and of conquering
race, that you are an incoming intransigent Achaean ;
'
you come
down into Thessaly and find the indigenous Salmoneus or it may be
Kapaneus at Thebes making thunder and lightning with his rainbirds
and water-pails and torches. What ! An earthly king, a
mortal man, presume to mock Zeus' thunder ! Impious wretch,
let him perish, blasted by the divine inimitable bolt:
Demens ! qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen
Aere et cornipedurn pulsu situularet equorum 3 .
The racial clash and conflict is interesting, and in dealing
with the story of Picus as told by Ovid some mention of it was
inevitable, but our business for the present lies solely with the
development of the lower indigenous stratum. In the figure of
Picus are united, or rather as yet undifferentiated, notions, to us
incompatible, of bird, seer-magician, king and daimon, if not god.
The daimon as we have already seen with respect to the Kouros
Kings were not deified because there were as yet no dei. The medicine-king is
; predeistic, but possessed of those powers which later and more cultured ages have
I relegated to the 'gods.'
1
Cf. such titles as Zeus Amphiaraos.
2 Suidas, s.v. IlrjKos'
ivddde Keirai davwv . . .Urjicos 6 ko.1 Zetfs.
3 Verg. Mn. vi. 590.