It is fascinating
to follow the historic evolution of the cosmic
thunderbolt, as the divine weapon of the gods passed
into the sword, spear, arrow, or club of the most famous
heroes of later times. Of course mythologists will not
normally think of the arrow of Apollo, the sword of
Perseus, or the club of Heracles as electric in nature.
One reason for this is that, as the early gods of the
thunderbolt evolved over the centuries, the chroniclers
gradually reduced them to human dimensions. A celestial
warrior bearing the thunderbolt in battle later lost his
cosmic attributes to become a great man, the best of
heroes, the esteemed ancestor of the tribe or nation
telling the story.
In such cases the
original identity of the magical weapon had already
slipped into the background, though only rarely could it
be hidden entirely. Often, what we get is just a shadow
of the cosmic missile so vividly described in early Near
Eastern narratives of primeval order and chaos.
As a bridge
between the more archaic world and the fragmented and
diluted myths of later times, Greek accounts offer many
clues pointing to the evolution of the symbolism. The
Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo describes the hero's
confrontation with the chaos serpent Python, whom the
chroniclers identified alternately as a form of the
dragon Typhon or as the nurse of Typhon. The Homeric and
other accounts refer to the invincible "arrow" launched
by Apollo, causing the monster to shudder violently and
to give up its life in a torrent of blood.
The ambiguity as
to the setting of the mythic accounts is emphasized in
the two paintings above, depicting Apollo's defeat of
Python. The upper painting by Eugène Delacroix has
preserved many touches of the original celestial
context, while the lower by J. M. W, Turner is much more
terrestrial in its setting.
Did the "arrow" of
Apollo really mean the cosmic thunderbolt, the weapon
that so often, in the earlier Near Eastern accounts,
took the form of an arrow? The most respected experts on
Greek mythology and symbolism assure us that arrows or
swords wielded by the revered gods of Greece cannot be
separated from the language of the thunderbolt. The
connection is apparent in the Greek keraunós,
"thunderbolt," most commonly used for Zeus' weapon and
said to stem from a Proto-Indo-European root *ker The
same root appears to lie behind the Sanskrit _áru-,
'arrow' and the Gothic haírus, 'sword.' This should not
surprise us, since the most familiar representations of
the "eagle" of Zeus (as, of course, the eagle of the
Latin Jupiter) depict the god's lightning as arrows held
in the talons of the bird--a representation well
preserved into modern times by the symbol of the eagle
and its lightning-arrows on the U.S. one dollar bill.
The same
association holds true for the sword of Apollo. The
god's epithet was chrysáoros or chrysáor--meaning
"of the Golden Sword" (áor). According to
the
distinguished authority, W. H. Roscher, the Golden Sword
is a Greek hieroglyph for the thunderbolt. Indeed Zeus
himself, the most famous wielder of the thunderbolt, was
Chrysaoreús or Chrysaórios, "He of the Golden Sword".
In much the same
way, the poet Pindar speaks of Zeus "whose spear is
lightning", while Aristophanes invokes lighting as "the
immortal fiery spear of Zeus". In the words of the poet
Nonnus, Zeus is "the javelin-thrower of the
thunderbolt". "The spear he shook [in the battle with
Typhon] was lightning." "Do thou in battle lift thy
lightning-flash, Olympus' luminous spear".
The question is
worth pursuing, therefore: have historians and
mythologists missed the true identity of the far-famed
hero and his weapon?
See also:
Mystery of the Cosmic Thunderbolt(1)
Mystery of the Cosmic Thunderbolt(2) |