emn nuncupations of
vows--

"O Zeus, father, O Zeus, king."

In moments of deepest sorrow, of immediate urgency and need, of greatest
stress and danger, they had recourse to Zeus.

"Courage, courage, my child!
There is still in heaven the great Zeus;
He watches over all things, and he rules.
Commit thy exceeding bitter griefs to him,
And be not angry against thine enemies,
Nor forget them."[179]

[Footnote 176: "Iliad," bk. iii. 324.]

[Footnote 177: Bk. xvi. 268.]

[Footnote 178: Mueller, p. 452.]

[Footnote 179: Sophocles, "Electra," v. 188.]

He was supplicated, as the God who reigns on high, in the prayer of the
Athenian--

"Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, on the land of the Athenians and on their
fields."

It has been urged that, as Zeus means the sky, therefore he is no more
than the deep concave of heaven personified and deified, and that
consequently Zeus is not the true, the only God. This argument is only
equalled in feebleness by that of the materialist, who argues that
"spiritus" means simply breath, therefore the breath is the soul. Even
if the Greeks remembered that, originally, Zeus meant the sky, that
would have no more perplexed their minds than the remembrance that
"thymos"--mind--meant originally blast. "The fathers of Greek theology
gave to that Supreme Intelligence, which they instinctively recognized
as above and ruling over the universe, the name of Zeus; but in doing
so, they knew well that by Zeus they meant more than the sky. The
unfathomable depth, the everlasting calm of the ethereal sky was to
their minds an image of that Infinite Presence which overshadows all,
and looks down on all. As the question perpetually recurred to their
minds, 'Where is he who abideth forever?' they lifted up their eyes, and
saw, as they thought, beyond sun, and moon, and stars, and all which
changes, and will change, the clear blue sky, the boundless firmament of
heaven. That never changed, that was always the same. The clouds and
storms rolled far below it, and all the bustle of this noisy world; but
there the sky was still, as bright and calm as ever. The Almighty Father
must be there, unchangeable in the unchangeable heaven; bright, and
pure, and boundless like the heavens, and like the heavens, too, afar
off."[180] So they named him after the sky, _Zeus_, the God who lives in
the clear heaven--the heavenly Father.

[Footnote 180: Kingsley, "Good News from