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

60 The Kouretes, Thunder-Rites and Mana [ch.
at least subconsciously. When
Kronos was about to swallow
Zeus, what is it that Rhea gives
him and that he really swallowed ?
A stone in swaddling clothes. On
the well-known relief 1 on the
Capitoline altar Rhea is figured
with the swaddled stone in her
hands, offering it to Kronos.
When the appointed time came
' that stone which he had swal-
lowed last he vomited forth first
and Zeus set it up in goodly
2 .'
Pytho as a sign and a marvel
In goodly Pytho it was seen by
Pausanias 3 ; it was anointed with
oil day by day, and had a yearly
festival. It was not till the stone
was vomited up that the thunder
and lightning were let loose 4 .
Long before Zeus was Zeus,
thunder and lightning were, in a
sense to be considered presently,
divine potencies, their vehicle
was a thunder-stone ;
by such a
thunder-stone was Pythagoras
purified, on such a thunder-stone
did he gaze in the Diktaean
cave.
1 Overbeck, Kunstniythologie, Atlas iii.
24.
2 Hes. Theog. 496
irp&Tov 5' e^elfieffue
irivwv
\L8oi>, irv^arov kclto.-
tqv fxkv Zei>s 0"T77pt^e Kara x^ ov^ s evpv-
o5etr?s
Ili'tfor iv dyadiri yva\ois viro Hapvyjaow
arjfH tfjiev e^oiriao} 6av/xa dvvrolui. flpo-
TOlfflV.
3 X. 24. 7.
4 See Prof. Gilbert Murray's illuminating
analysis and interpretation of the
confused Hesiodic account in Anthropology
and the Classics, p. 86.