offered sacrifices and built temples to him, and called him Zeus Σωτήρ and Ἐπόψιος and Μειλίχιος. Indignant at this, Zeus wished to consume his whole house with a thunderbolt. But when Apollo, whom Periphas used to honour exceedingly, begged Zeus not to destroy him utterly, Zeus granted the request. He came into the home of Periphas and found him embracing his wife. Grasping them both in his hands, he turned Periphas into an eagle (αἰετός); his wife, who begged him to make her too a bird to bear Periphas company, into a vulture (φήνη). So upon Periphas he bestowed honours in return for his holy life among men, making him king over all the birds, and granting him to guard the sacred sceptre, and to draw near to his own throne; while Periphas' wife he turned into a vulture, and suffered to appear as a good omen to men in all their doings." In short, it appears that terrestrial Zeuses were either killed or, more often, metamorphosed into birds by the celestial Zeus. Is not this a trace of the primitive belief that the life of the divine king was forfeit to the god whom he represented?
The full meaning of these transformations into birds cannot here be investigated.[1] But I would suggest that
- ↑ It would have to be considered in relation to two sets of facts: (a) Certain tribes bearing bird-names claimed descent from an eponymous ancestor. Thus Dryops the "Wood-pecker" (δρύοψ) was the eponym of the Dryopes or Woodpecker tribe: see Class Rev., xviii., 83. Phlegyas the "Eagle" (φλεγύας) was the eponym of the Phlegyæ or Eagle tribe. Pelasgus, the eponym of the Pelasgians, may have been a "Stork": for the word πελασγός appears in the Eretrian dialect as πελαργός (G. Meyer Griech. Gram.³ p. 307), an extremely archaic myth speaks of Pelargus with the variant Pelasgus (Lact. Plac. in Stat. Theb., 7.256), a Delphic oracle called the Pelasgian fortification at the foot of the Athenian Acropolis τὸ Πελαργικόν (Thuc., 2.17, cp. Aristoph. av., 832,
republican Athens, during his year of office, sat in the Royal Colonnade (Paus., 1.3.1), which was dedicated to Zeus Βασιλεύς (Hesych., s. v. βασίλειος στοά). Cp. also Cic. de nat. deor., 3.53, Anactes Athenis, ex rege Iove antiquissimo et Proserpina nati, Tritopatreus, Eubuleus, Dionysus; and Class. Rev., xviii., 371.
