File:Zeus - a study in ancient religion (1914) (14802383573).jpg

Identifier: zeusstudyinancie02cook (find matches)
Title: Zeus : a study in ancient religion
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Cook, Arthur Bernard, 1868-1952
Subjects: Zeus (Greek deity) Cults Sun worship Classical antiquities Folk literature
Publisher: Cambridge (Eng.) The University Press
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
' Four stars of approximately equal magnitude will be noticed forming a rectangular
figure flanked by two other stars. There are in the northern sky two well-known instances
of stars disposed in a rectangle, viz. the body of the Plough (Ursa Major) and the great
square of Pegasus. Here the addition of Pegasus himself puts the meaning beyond doubt.
The fact that the moon appears as a comparatively thin crescent shows that a time

1018 Appendix F

The hero of another folk-tale captures the Winged Horse of the Plain : he
waits till it stoops its head in drinking from a spring, then leaps on to its back,
and makes it swear by its brother to serve him¹. He too can be paralleled by
Bellerophontes, who captures Pegasos while drinking at the spring Peirene² ;
and Pegasos, we remember, has Chrysaor for brother³. Lastly, the folk-tale
hero, who as a new-born babe is put into a box and flung into the sea, while
his mother is walled up in the jakes⁴, recalls the classical myth of Danae, first
shut up in an underground chamber and then sent adrift in a chest on the sea
Text Appearing After Image:
Fig. 886.

with the infant Perseus. And, when the said folk-tale hero vanquishes the
Tzitzinaina that turns men into stone⁵, we can but compare Perseus decapitating
Medousa and returning in triumph with her petrifying head. The fact is, these
modern European folk-tales are—as E. S. Hartland expresses it— 'stuff of the
kind out of which the classical and other mythologies grew⁶'. Such cor-
respondences between the modern illiterate folk-tale and the ancient literary
myth are, therefore, to be expected. Parian marble must needs bear a certain
resemblance to the Hermes of Praxiteles⁷.

either quite early or quite late in the lunation is intended. If the former, the vase must
represent the western horizon soon after sunset in spring. If the latter, it represents thee
astern sky shortly before sunrise in autumn. No obvious meaning attaches to the short
curved lines within or without the moon's disc. The scale on which the moon is repre-
sented is much larger than that on which the great square of Pegasus appears.'

Note About Images