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

vi] Zeus Kataibates and the Olive 175
under the special charge of Zeus Morios. His altar was in the
Academy and he was worshipped, we learn to our delight, not
only as Morios but as Kataibates 1 . Later moralists would explain
that this was because he avenged sacrilege by lightning ; the real
truth lies deeper and is benignant ; he, the rain and thunder-god,
fertilized the earth and brought forth the sacred olives.
The scholiast who gives us this welcome information about
Zeus, who is both Morios and Kataibates, is commenting on the
famous chorus in praise of Athens in the Oedipus Coloneus' 2 :
And this country for her own has what no Asian land has known,
Nor ever yet in the great Dorian Pelops' island has it grown,
The untended, the self-planted, self-defended from the foe,
Sea-gray children-nurturing olive tree that here delights to grow.
None may take nor touch nor harm it, headstrong youth nor age grown
bold,
For the
old.
round of heaven of Morian Zeus has been its watcher from of
He beholds it and, Athene, thy own sea-gray eyes behold.
Athena with her sea-gray eyes we expect : watching her olive
tree she is canonical ; but, to most readers, the round eye of
Morian Zeus comes as something of a surprise. If we remember
the afiarov on the Acropolis, with the lightning trident-mark and
the hole in the roof, we wonder no longer that the old sky-god,
with his round eye, should be looking down on his own olive tree.
What was a mere poetical image becomes a ritual reality and
gathers the fresh bloom of a new if somewhat homely beauty.
Nor is it only a poet praising his own city who remembers such
local sanctities. Aeschylus in the Danaides 3 told of the sacred
1 Apollodorus, ap. Schol. ad Soph. Oe.d. Col. 705 wepi 'AKadrmLav karlv 6 re rod
KaTaifidrov Aids /3w,u.os 5c Kai Mopiov KaXovcri [oVo] twv eicei iiopi&v.
2 Soph. Oed. Col. 704
6 yap alev opwv kijkXos
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