User:Michael Aurel/Zeus

Dodona

archaeological - no buildings before 400, previously open sky (BNP) - temple of zeus - temple of dione? (oberh) - building program - votive offerings (chapinal heras 30)

pilgrimage/attracting visitors - attracted visitors from various parts of the Greek world (more or less: chapinal-heras 234) - panhellenic (encyc anc hist, chapinal-heras) - pilgrimage (chapinal heras)

other stuff: - games/naia festival - later history (BNP) - figurines?

Near East and Africa

near east:

africa: cyrene siwa

Refs

Other notes

Re role in polis: Tendency of Zeus's cult to be outside of polis (kreutz 259, 265) not the tutelary deity of any city (voutiras 338; to the same effect, BNP, last para, similar-ish burkert 130) few major polis festivals (OCD) "overall protector and cannot confine himself to one polis only" (OCD) no major temple on an acropolis (OCD); few sanctuaries on acropoleis, usually worshipped there as weather god (kreutz 259) (along the same lines: see larson 2016 32)

Re distribution of worship, panhellenic: mountain cults (BNP; Kolotourou) panhellenic deity (graf, burkert 130, limc 132) not a "national" god (simon)

Other: relation to jupiter (Hejduk; BNP; kreutz; dowden 108 ff) not personal, absurd to love zeus (limc) "Zeus imagined in one place might be rather different from the Zeus imagined in another" (dowden 41-42) had over 1000 epithets (BNP) numerous other guises (larson15) [Quotes relating to social order:] "His cults typically reinforce traditional sources of authority and standards of behavior, whether in the family, the kinship group, or the city" (Larson 15) "protector of the social and moral order" (bremmer 16) "guarantor of universal order and, by extension, of the keeping of human laws" (LIMC) social order (see linke 2006 92) realm in the polis was the agora (graf para. 9, similar-ish linke 92) also oracular deity (bnp) often used by tyrants, especially during the archaic period (kreutz 262) -- see also schwabl

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Olga Zolotnikova perceives sizeable discrepancies between the Zeus of Homeric epic and the Zeus worshipped in the Early Iron Age (c. 1200–700 BC),^[1]

Walter Burkert perceives a male initiation rite in a tradition described by the Hellenistic author Evanthes,^[2] in which an Arcadian boy crosses a lake and becomes a wolf for nine years, before returning to human form.^[3]

In her study of Zeus in early Greek religion, Olga Zolotnikova argues that during the Late Bronze Age (c. 1700–1000 BC)^[4] there was an attenuation of Zeus's worship before an eventual regeneration owing to the works of Homer.^[5] She sees the Zeus of the Early Iron Age (c. 1200–700 BC)^[6] as not yet the supreme god of the pantheon, worshipped primarily under the open sky rather than in temples.^[7]

Around forty ceramic figurines, which are examples of Votives (items left in a location as offerings to a deity), depict survive from the have sometimes been interpreted as representations of Zeus

Sylvain Lebreton argues that the ritual would have justified a transformation of holocaustic sacrifices (those in which the animal was burned fully) received by the Zeus of the Attic mountaintops into sacrifices followed by a meal of meat.^[8]

Other locations of Zeus Meilichios's worship in Attica include an altar along the Cephissus river and (probably) a shrine on the Hill of the Nymphs in Athens.{{refn|Schwabl 1972, p. 1069 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFSchwabl1972 (help) (altar along Cephissus); {{harvnb|

and outside its front was a statue whose subject ancient authors interchangeably described as Zeus Eleutherios or Zeus Soter ('the Saviour').^[9]

This temple was possibly constructed in the late 5th or early 4th century BC,^[10]

(from note to content about continuity at palaikastro) According to Prent, p. 96 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFPrent (help), the Hymn to Zeus Diktaios, which calls its addressee the "greatest Kouros", may indicate the later cult preserves "important elements of the god's Bronze Age iconography and identity".

The location of Dikte has been a matter of dispute in scholarship^[11]

[Old treatment of Euripides fragment:] refers to "mústai of Idaean Zeus", suggesting the cave was the site of mysteries.^[12]

The patron deity of Termessos, located in Pisidia, was Zeus Solymeus,.^[13]

Around the beginning of the 2nd century BC, alongside the advent of the Attalid rulers in the region of Pisidia, sizeable Ionic temples were constructed in multiple of its cities, each seemingly in honour of a Hellenised version of the city's indigenous principal god.^[14]

and the 5th-century BC historian Herodotus described it as the most ancient oracle of the Greeks.^[15]