The European Sky-god. 289
was taken by the Greeks, Priam fled for refuge to this god's altar. In the division of the spoil Sthenelus, son of Capaneus, got this image, and that is why it stands here." The cult thus attested for Argos and Troy probably ex- tended to other Pelasgian towns. It is significant that the name Triopas occurs again as that of a religious founder at the Carian Triopium.^"^^ A Rhodian hero, the son of Helios and Rhodos, bore the same name.^'^^ Triopas or Triops was also the father of Merops the Coan.^^* Rhodes and Cos had alike in early days been peopled by Carians,^^ and the Carians were but one tribe of the Pelasgian stock ; ^^° so that the four personages named Triopas thus far men- tioned were all probably Pelasgians. Again, a certain Triopas was king of the Pelasgians at Dotium in Thessaly, where dwelt the clan of the Triopidae.-^^^ Another king of the Perrhaebians, who occupied a part of Thessaly known as Pelasgiotis,^^'-' was called Triopas. ^^^ Lastly, the father of Pelasgus himself bore the same name.'^* It can hardly be doubted that the name Triopas or Triops, wherever it occurs, has reference to the cult of the three-eyed Pelasgian Zeus. The same deity figures in a Peloponnesian legend. When the Heraclidae returned to the Peloponnese, an oracle bade them take as their guide " the Three-eyed One " {tov rpLOipOaXfiov). They followed a man driving a mule, which was blind of one eye,^^^ apparently not real- ising the drift of the oracle. But on entering the promised land they built three altars to Zeus UaTpwos, "Paternal"
^ Class. Rev., xviii., 76 f.
1" Diod., 5. 56, 61 ; cp. schol. Find. 01, 7. 131, Suid. s.v. MiQtuv.
"' Steph. Byz. s.v. Mepo^, schol. vet. Theocr., 17. 68.
"' W. Ridgeway, Tke Early Age of Greece, i., 197 f.
'"o lb., i., 183 ff.
'^' Callim. hymn. Dem., 25 ff.
'^ Aesch. stippl., 256.
"' Schol. //., 4. 88 ; Eustath., 448, il.
'84 Hellanicus ap. schol. //., 3. 75 ; Paus., 2. 22. i ; \\^-g. fab. 145.
'** Paus., 5. 3. 5 f. ; cp. ApoUod., 2. 8. 3, Suid. s.v. Tpi6<p9akixoQ.
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