Note 566 — Chapter XVII · GOVERNMENT IN THE HEROIC AGE.

The parallel must not be pressed too far of course. According to Tzetzes all kings were called Ζεύς. But apparently not all kings were descended from Zeus; Nestor, for example, was sprung from Poseidon according to Od. XI 254 ff. We may refer however to Hesiod, Theog. 96, where kings are said to derive their authority from Zeus, and to the Homeric epithet διοτρεφής (possibly also διογενής) which is commonly applied to kings. Frey on the other hand was an ancestral god but not the chief of the gods, though he is sometimes in poetry called folkvaldi goða, which Saxo translates by satrapa deorum.