Читать книгу The Mythology of Greece and Rome, With Special Reference to Its Use in Art онлайн

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The superstition of early times saw in all the phenomena of the heavens manifestations of the divine will. Thus the chief deity of heaven was naturally regarded as the highest source of inspiration, and was believed to reveal his will to men in the thunder, the lightning, the flight of birds, or dreams. As the supreme oracular deity, Zeus not only had an oracle of his own at Dodona in Epirus, which was the most ancient in Greece, but also revealed the future by the mouth of his favourite son Apollo. Though he possessed no proper oracle among the Romans, yet the latter looked with all the more care and anxiety on the phenomena of the air and sky, the right interpretation of which formed a special and difficult branch of knowledge.

Zeus was the earliest national god of the Greeks. His worship extended throughout the whole of Greece, though some of his shrines had a special importance. The most ancient of them was that at Dodona, where the Pelasgian Zeus was worshipped at a time prior to the existence of any temples in Greece. He was here represented in the celebrated form of the sacred oak, in the rustling of whose branches the deity revealed himself to the faithful. He was also worshipped on the summit of Mount Tomarus, at the foot of which lay Dodona—mountain-tops being naturally the earliest seats of his worship. But all the earlier shrines were overshadowed by the great national seat of the worship of Hellenic Zeus at Olympia, on the northern banks of the river Alpheus, in Elis, where the renowned Olympian games were celebrated. The magnificent statue of Zeus, by Phidias, was an additional inducement to devotees, who flocked thither from every quarter.