Aitnaios
Aetnaeus ( ancient Greek Αἰτναῖος , Latinized Aetnaeus) is an epiclesis of the Greek gods Zeus and Hephaestus with which they on Sicilian volcano Mount Etna were worshiped.
A festival called Aitnaia in honor of Zeus Aitnaios was celebrated in the city of Aitne on Etna . The festival is said to have been organized by Hieron when he founded the city, only known about the festival itself that agons were held in the form of chariot races . There was also a cult statue on Mount Etna. A picture of Zeus Aitnaios can be found on the lapel of a tetradrachm from Aitne, on which he sits on an ornamented throne covered with a panther skin. He is dressed in a himation , in his left hand he holds his thunderbolt, in his right a staff that is interpreted as a vine. In front of him is a pine tree on which an eagle sits. The panther skin and the vine indicate that features of the Dionysus cult may have flowed into the cult of Zeus Aitnaios .
Since the god of blacksmithing Hephaestus was thought to live in Etna, he was also worshiped as Hephaestus Aitnaios . In the satyr play Cyclops by Euripides he is invoked by Odysseus , in Gaius Valerius Flaccus and Claudius Aelianus he is mentioned in his Roman equivalent Vulcanus as ruler of Etna.
The Latin poets Virgil and Ovid also used Aetnaeus as an epithet for the Cyclops , who, as assistants of Vulcanus, also inhabit Etna.
literature
- Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher: Aitnaios 1–3 . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1,1, Leipzig 1886, column 202 ( digitized version ).
- Georg Wentzel : Aitnaios 1. In: Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume I, 1, Stuttgart 1893, Col. 1111.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Pindar Olympien 6, 96; Scholion at Olympia 6, 162; Nemeen 1, 4 and the Scholion to the place.
- ^ Description and picture of the tetradrachm
- ↑ Mirko Vonderstein: The Zeus cult among the Western Greeks . Reichert, 2006. ISBN 3895005460 , p. 60.
- ↑ Euripides Cyclops 599.
- ^ Gaius Valerius Flaccus Argonautica 2, 420.
- ^ Claudius Aelianus de natura animalium 11, 3.
- ↑ Virgil Aeneid 8, 440; 11, 263; 3, 668.
- ^ Ovid Epistulae ex Ponto 2, 2, 115.
