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

in] Child and Thunder-stone 59
not in style, is a Graeco-Roman relief (Fig. 8), now in the museum
at Mantua 1
. Here
bolt ;
again we have the spread throne, the thunder-
the only additiou is an eagle.
The thunderbolt was to the primitive Greek not the symbol
or attribute of the god, but itself the divine thing, the embodiment
and vehicle of the god. As such, long after Zeus had taken
on full human form in literature, it held its place in cultus, not
as a weapon in the hand of the human god, but actually occupying
his throne. This identity of the two is specially manifest in the
Fig. 8.
figure of the infant Zagreus. In the terracotta relief from the
Palazzo Colonna, reproduced in Fig. 3, we have seen three dancing
Kouretes or Korybantes who clash their shields over the infant
Zeus. Near him, lying on the ground, is a thunderbolt, his vehicle,
his equivalent rather than his attribute.
The human child completely replaces the thunderbolt. On
the ivory relief 2 from Milan (Fig. 9) the child is seated on the
throne once held by the thunderbolt. This relief though late
embodies a primitive form of the myth. It is matriarchal and
tribal in sentiment. We have the Mother and Child, the Kouretes
and their correlatives the Satyrs, but the Father is nowhere
represented.
The fact that child and thunder-stone were one and the same
was deep-rooted in myth as well as ritual. Hesiod 3 knew it,
3 E. Braun, Kunstmythologie, Taf. 6.
2 Arch. Zeit. 1846, Taf. 38 ; with this relief may be compared the child on the
throne in the coin of Magnesia, p. 241.
3 Hes. Theog. 485 t 5e cnrapyavhacra. fieyav \idov iyyvd\i^et>.