Greece.[1] The political assembly and the law-court were consecrated to Ζεὺς Ἀγοραῖος,[2] and being the eternal source of justice he might be invoked as Δικαιόσυνος “The Just.”[3] As the god who brought the people under one government he might be worshipped as Πάνδημος;[4] as the deity of the whole of Hellas, Ἑλλάνιος,[5] a title that belonged originally to Aegina and to the prehistoric tribe of the Aeacidae, and had once the narrower application to the “Thessalian Hellenes,” but acquired the Pan-Hellenic sense, in fact expanded into the form Πανελλήνιος, perhaps about the time of the Persian wars, when thanksgiving for the victory took the form of dedications and sacrifice to “Zeus the Liberator”—Ἐλευθέριος.[6] Finally, in the formulae adopted for the public oath, where many deities were invoked, the name of Zeus was the masterword.
There is reason for thinking that this political character of Zeus belongs to the earliest period of his religion, and it remained as long as that religion lasted. Yet in one respect Apollo was more dominant in the political life; for Apollo possessed the more powerful oracle of Delphi. Zeus spoke directly to his people at Dodona only,[7] and with authority only in ancient times; for owing to historical circumstances and the disadvantage of its position, Dodona paled before Delphi.
It remains to consider briefly certain moral aspects of his cult. The morality attaching to the oath, so deeply rooted in the conscience of primitive peoples, was expressed in the cult of Zeus Ὅρκιος, the God who punished perjury.[8] The whole history of Greek legal and moral conceptions attaching to the guilt of homicide can be studied in relation to the cult-appellatives of Zeus. The Greek consciousness of the sin of murder, only dimly awakened in the Homeric period, and only sensitive at first when a kinsman or a suppliant was slain, gradually expands till the sanctity of all human life becomes recognized by the higher morality of the people: and the names of Ζεὺς Μειλίχιος, the dread deity of the ghost-world whom the sinner must make “placable,” of Ἱκέσιος and Προστροπαῖος, to whom the conscience-striken outcast may turn for mercy and pardon, play a guiding-part in this momentous evolution.[9]
Even this summary reveals the deep indebtedness of early Greek civilization to this cult, which engendered ideas of importance for the higher religious thought of the race, and which might have developed into a monotheistic religion, had a prophet-philosopher arisen powerful enough to combat the polytheistic proclivities of Hellas. Yet the figure of Zeus had almost faded from the religious world of Hellas some time before the end of paganism; and Lucian makes him complain that even the Egyptian Anubis is more popular than he, and that men think they have done the outworn God sufficient honour if they sacrifice to him once in five years at Olympia. The history of religions supplies us with many examples of the High God losing his hold on the people's consciousness and love. In the case of this cult the cause may well have been a certain coldness, a lack of enthusiasm and mystic ardour, in the service. These stimulants were offered rather by Demeter and Dionysus, later by Cybele, Isis and Mithras.
Bibliography.—For older authorities see Preller-Robert, Griechische Mythologie, i. pp. 115-159; Welcker's Griechische Götterlehre, ii. pp. 178-216; among recent works, Gruppe's Griechische Mythologie, ii. pp. 1100-1121; Farnell's Cults of the Greek States, vol. i. pp. 35-178; Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines, s.v., “Jupiter”; A. B. Cook's articles in Classical Review, 1903-1904, “Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak”: for cult-monuments and art-representations, Overbeck, Kunst-Mythologie, vol. i. (L. R. F.)
ZEUXIS, a Greek painter, who flourished about 420–390 B.C., and described himself as a native of Heraclea, meaning probably the town on the Black Sea. He was, according to one account, a pupil of Damophilus of Himera in Sicily, the other statement being that he was a pupil of Neseus of Thasos. Afterwards he appears to have resided in Ephesus. His known works are—
| 1. Zeus surrounded by Deities. | 8. Alcmena, possibly another |
| 2. Eros crowned with Roses. | name for 7. |
| 3. Marsyas bound. | 9. Helena at Croton. |
| 4. Pan. | 10. Penelope. |
| 5. Centaur family. | 11. Menelaus. |
| 6. Boreas or Triton. | 12. Athlete. |
| 7. Infant Heracles strangling the | 13. An old Woman. |
| serpents in presence of his | 14. Boy with grapes. |
| parents, Alcmena and | 15. Grapes. |
| Amphitryon. | 16. Monochromes. |
| 17. Plastic works in clay. |
In ancient records we are told that Zeuxis, following the initiative of Apollodorus, had introduced into the art of painting a method of representing his figures in light and shadow, as opposed to the older method of outline, with large flat masses of colour for draperies, and other details, such as had been practised by Polygnotus and others of the great fresco painters. The new method led to smaller compositions, and often to pictures consisting of only a single figure, on which it was more easy for the painter to demonstrate the combined effect of the various means by which he obtained perfect roundness of form. The effect would appear strongly realistic, as compared with the older method, and to this was probably due the origin of such stories as the contest in which Zeuxis painted a bunch of grapes so like reality that birds flew towards it, while Parrhasius painted a curtain which even Zeuxis mistook for real. It is perhaps a variation of this story when we are told (Pliny) that Zeuxis also painted a boy holding grapes towards which birds flew, the artist remarking that if the boy had been as well painted as the grapes the birds would have kept at a distance. But, if the method of Zeuxis led him to real roundness of form, to natural colouring, and to pictures consisting of single figures or nearly so, it was likely to lead him also to search for striking attitudes or motives, which by the obviousness of their meaning should emulate the plain intelligibility of the larger compositions of older times. Lucian, in his Zeuxis, speaks of him as carrying this search to a novel and strange degree, as illustrated in the group of a female Centaur with her young. When the picture was exhibited, the spectators admired its novelty and overlooked the skill of the painter, to the vexation of Zeuxis. The pictures of Heracles strangling the serpents to the astonishment of his father and mother (7), Penelope (10), and Menelaus Weeping (11) are quoted as instances in which strong motives naturally presented themselves to him. But, in spite of the tendency towards realism inherent in the new method of Zeuxis, he is said to have retained the ideality which had characterized his predecessors. Of all his known works it would be expected that this quality would have appeared best in his famous picture of Helena, for this reason, that we cannot conceive any striking or effective incident for him in her career. In addition to this, however, Quintilian states (Inst. Orat. xii. 10, 4) that in respect of robustness of types Zeuxis had followed Homer, while there is the fact that he had inscribed two verses of the Iliad (iii. 156 seq.) under his figure of Helena. As models for the picture he was allowed the presence of five of the most beautiful maidens of Croton at his own request, in order that he might be able to “transfer the truth of life to a mute image.” Cicero (De Invent. ii. 1, 1) assumed that Zeuxis had found distributed among these five the various elements that went to make up a figure of ideal beauty. It should not, however, be understood that the painter had made up his figure by the process of combining the good points of various models, but rather that he found among those models the points that answered to the ideal Helena in his own mind, and that he merely required the models to guide and correct himself by during the process of transferring his ideal to form and colour. This picture also is said to have been exhibited publicly, with the result that Zeuxis made much profit out of it. By this and other means,
- ↑ Antiphon vi. p. 789; Pausan. i. 3, 5: cf. Corp. Inscr. Attic. iii. 683.
- ↑ Farnell, op. cit. vol. i. p. 162.
- ↑ Amer. Journ. Archaeol., 1905, p. 302.
- ↑ C. I. A. 3, 7. Head, Hist. Num. p. 569.
- ↑ Herod. ix. 7, 4; Pind. Nem. v. 15 (Schol.).
- ↑ Simonides, Frag. 140 (Bergk), Strab. 412.
- ↑ There was a minor oracle of Zeus at Olympia. See Oracle.
- ↑ Pausan. v. 24, 9.
- ↑ Farnell, op. cit. vol. i. pp. 64–69.
