[51] Theog. 386 ff.
[52] Dionys. Hal. Antiq. i. 71.
[53] Plut. Num. 15.
[54] See Folklore, xv. 304.
[55] According to the White Book of Papua for 1907, containing the governor’s report to the Federal Government, the only murder of a white man committed during last year was due to a wish for this medicine. A native called Hariki had built a new house and wished to make it strong and paint it with a mixture of red-clay and coconut-oil. For this purpose, it seems, special medicine was necessary, and in order to have it as strong as possible, Hariki determined to get it from a white man. He obtained it by killing a market-gardener called Weaver, with whom he was on quite friendly terms. Indeed, when the medicine had been obtained, Hariki and his friends ‘proceeded, under the guidance of one of the party who was skilled in charms,’ to bring Weaver back to life. They began at the feet, and succeeded, so they said, in reviving all the lower part of the body; but there was a great wound in the chest which they could not pass. So at last they hid the corpse away, and arranged that it should seem to have been eaten by alligators.
[56] Phorbas, being the strongest of the Phlegyai, was chosen their king. He lived under an oak, wrestled with all comers, and hung their heads on the oak. Kerkyon (et. quercus?) of Eleusis did much the same. So did Oinomaos. His daughter’s suitors had to challenge him to a chariot race; he hung up the heads of those whom he defeated. Pelops, having defeated him, slew him and took the kingdom. Apparently the daughter’s hand carried the kingdom with it, as the daughter of Zeus in the Birds is Basileia, ‘Royalty.’ Kyknos made a pyramid of skulls. The others killed their rivals in various ways.
[57] Theog. 485 ff. Cf. 690, where Zeus fights with the thunder as his weapon; also 853 ff., where he crushes Typhoeus, who ‘would have become king over mortals and immortals, but that Zeus saw him and used the thunder’.
[58] Thus in our present version of the Theogony Zeus is not swallowed at all: only the stone is swallowed. And when it reappears Zeus sets it to be a sign at Pytho. Comment is hardly needed. No one supposes that we have the stories of the Theogony in their original state. There is ‘contamination’ and ‘conciliation’ visible throughout the book.
[59] Paus. x. 24, 5; cp. ix. 2, 7 and Frazer’s note.