Talfourd Ely - The Gods of Greece and Rome

WHEN earth in springtime clothed herself afresh with herbage and with flowers ; when summers glow withered alike the foliage and the grass ; when the refreshing storm burst forth from the hills, or winters grim tempests wrapped the land in snow,then knew the Greeks full well that a mightier power than mans guided nature on her path,a heavenly power, whose name was Zeus. Unseen of mortal eye, he yet was known by his works ; and his presence was often felt very near,aye ! nearer and nearer the higher men climbed the mountain-side. For there on the mountaintop he mostly had his dwelling. So lofty and so awful did the nature of Zeus appear in olden time that in such places ordinary men cared not to draw too nigh to him. So, amidst Arcadias mountains the lonely towering Wolfs Peak, or Lykaios, was a specially sacred abode of the god of heaven ; Lykaios, from which men gazed over the whole Peloponnese, and in whose forests wolves, bears, and wild boars had their home. Here the pious of olden times had established a holy place for Zeus, the wolf-god (Lykaios). For was it not a destructive frenzy as of a ravening wolf, if in mid-summer the scorching heat of heaven blasted natures blossoming life, and spread death and barrenness over the fields ? So raged, then, Zeus Lykaios against nature and against man. Him to appease, nought else but human sacrifice availed, and thus horrid rites lingered here on the lonely peak of Arcadias highlands, perhaps even till Christian times. He who tasted of the victims flesh, that the god alone had a right to taste, was changed for nine years space into a were-wolf, wandering in loneliness, and shunning the company of human kind. He who, unbidden, burst into this holy place of Zeus lost his shadow ; that is, he vanished from the number of the living, for the disembodied dead alone no shadows cast.

Yet the gods wrath was not without end; nay, twas the same Zeus that sent, too, the refreshing shower. The priest need only stir with an oak twig the waters of the mountain-stream, and mists came forth and rolled together into the cloud teeming with rain.

And as on Arcadias Wolf-mount, so, too, in Crete men had to tell of a god of heaven, destroying what he had brought into being; only here such deeds were portioned out between two persons, and it was not Zeus that was regarded as the destroyer, but his father Kronos. He devoured, so ran the tale, all the children his wife Rhea bore him, save the youngest, Zeus. In his stead shrewd Rhea gave her husband a stone, wrapped in swaddling clothes, to swallow, while she carried the young Zeus, fair as springtime, to a cave on Mount Ida, where he was reared by honey-laden bees, and by the nymph Amaltheia, who nurtured the boy with goats milk. But when the little fellow cried, then the youths (Kouretes) would begin their war-dance, and by striking together spears and shields raised such a din that the father heard not his childs cries, and could do him no harm. Long did they in Crete celebrate this festival of the birth of Zeus with such armed dances, and struck upon their shields as though they would frighten away evil spirits, and keep them off from the child awakening with the spring.