XLIX] Studies in primitive Greeiv religion. 55 



been destroyed during the Messenian war by the same deity. 

 Certain Lacedaemonians who had been. condemned to death 

 on some charge or other, took sanctuary at Taenarum; but 

 the college of ephors tore them from the altar and put them 

 to death. For this violation of the rights of his sanctuary 

 the wrath of Poseidou fell upon the Spartans and by an 

 earthquake he levelled the whole city with the ground ^). 

 Owing to a similar violation of the rights of asylum an 

 earthquake once occurred in Achaia. The Achaians of Helice 

 had turned out some suppliants from the sanctuary of Po- 

 seidon, and put them to death. The wrath of the god did 

 not tarry. The land was instantly visited by an earthquake, 

 which swollowed up not only the buildings but the very 

 ground on which the city had stood 2). 



Incidentally such phenomena were ascribed to other dei- 

 ties also. Thus Pausanias records that the whole Phlegyan 

 race in Boiotia had been utterly overthrown by the violent 

 earthquakes and thunderbolts of Apollo '^). The same god, 

 according to Aelianus, once frustrated with earth shocks the 

 action of those Delphians who were seeking for a treasure in 

 the Pythian temple by digging around the altar*). That a 

 heavenly god was looked upon as the cause of a phenomenon 

 of this kind was probably an incidental and låter idea. Even 

 Zeus himself, as we gather from Homer ^), sometimes in his 

 wrath caused both heaven and earth to shake. in modern 

 Greece we iind this belief lingering on, for instance, in the 

 island of Zacynthus, a place often visited by earthquakes. 

 According to one prevalent populär belief such phenomena 

 are caused by the heavenly god who bows his head towards 

 the earth or shakes his hair in anger •*). More primitive how- 

 ever, is au other idea prevailing in the same island, viz. 



1) Paus. IV, 24, 5, 6. 



2) Paus. VII, 24, 6 

 =») Ibid. IX, 36, 3. 



*) Aelian. Var. hist. VI, 9. 

 «) Cf. Hom. II. I. 528 etc. 

 *) Schniidt, Volksleben der Neugriechen, p. 33. 



