Note 63 — PART II CHAPTER VIII ORIGINS OF THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY THE THRACIAN WORSHIP OF DIONYSOS

. . οὐδένα ἄλλον θεὸν νομίζοντες εἰ μὴ τὸν σφέτερον (the Zalmoxis just mentioned) Hdt. iv, 94 fin. There we are told that the Getai πρὸς βροντήν τε καὶ ἀστραπὴν τοξεύοντες ἄνω ἀπειλεῦσι τῷ θεῷ, οὐδένα κτλ. If it were true (as most people seem to think) that the god (ὁ θεός) threatened by the Getai during thunder was their own god Zalmoxis, then it certainly is difficult, or, indeed, impossible, to understand the point of explaining the threatening of this god by the statement that they hold him for the only true god. The truth is that the τῷ θεῷ refers simply to the “sky” during a thunderstorm. The usage is common in Greek and is only transferred to the Getai by a rather awkward extension. This thundering θεός is not Zalmoxis at all (hence Z. is not as some have thought a “sky-god”). The Getai regarded Zalmoxis as the only god: the Thunderer is no real god to them (at the most a bad demon or a magician or something of the kind). To show that they are not afraid of him they shoot arrows against him, probably in the hope of breaking the thundercloud. (Parallels in other countries: Grimm, p. 1088; Dobrizhoffer, ii, 78. In India, Oldenberg, 491–4. Excitement during an eclipse of the moon: Weissenborn on Livy, 26, 5, 9. Reminiscence of such customs in the myth of Herakles: [Apollod.] 2, 5, 10, 5. From Hdt. by indirect channels comes Isig., Mir. 42 [p. 162 West.]; cf. also the account of D.C. 59, 28, 6 about Caligula.—Pallad., RR. i, 35 [contra grandinem].)