PART 2 – Ch

PART 2 – Ch.XII.5

(The principal prehistoric divinities of Dacia)

XII. 5. Saturn as Zeus Dachie and Dokius Caeli filius.

During Graeco-Roman antiquity, Saturn appears to have been also worshipped as Zeus Dachie, as supreme divinity of Dacia.

The Pelasgians, as Herodotus tells us, had in the beginning no particular names for their divinities, but they simply called them Theous, zei, gods (lib. II. c. 52).

These names of theos and deus, which in the beginning had been attributed to Uranos and Saturn, as personifications of the divinity of the sky and the earth, were later replaced in the public cult with the expressions of Zeus and Jupiter (Macrobius, Saturn. I. 10).

In fact though, the Greek Zeus, with its forms of Dis, Deus (Eolian) and Sdeus (Beotian), as well as the Latin Jupiter (diu’piter, divus pater, deus pater), were only simple appellations (Stephani, Thesaurus, 1). Agamemnon was also honored with the name of Zeus (Lykophron, Alex. v.1124) and so was Hercules (Aelianis, H. A. XvII.40), while Aeneas was named Jupiter (Preller-Jordan, R.M.I. 94; II.321).

From the historical point of view of the beliefs, as well as the ritual, Zeus Dodonaios Pelasgichos from Epirus (Homer, Iliad, XVI. v.233), Zeus Peloros (Batonis Sinopensis, Fragm. Hist. Graec. IV. 349; Pauly, Real-Encyclopadie, p.592), or ‘Omoloios from Thessaly and Beotia (Suidas), Zeus Papaios of the Scythians (Herodotus, lib. IV. c.59), Jupiter avus of the Trojans (Virgil, Aen. VII.v.219-220) and Jupiter Latiaris, worshipped on the mountain Alban, did not represent the god of the third generation, the Hellenic Jove of the theomachy, who had usurped the throne of Saturn, but the great God of the Pelasgian nation, the divinity of light and atmospheric phenomena, to whom Saturn was assimilated, the historic representative of the tilling of the earth, of prosperity and abundance.

The most famous cult of the great “Pelasgian god”, as known by history to this day, was at Dodona in the Epirus. But much more famous and ancient was the cult of the “too good and too great god” of the Abi and the Agavi, from the north of Thrace, the most just of all men, towards whom Jove turns his eyes from Troy (Homer, Iliad, XIII.v.6). These Abi and Agavi, by their sweet mores and their dwellings at the north of the Istru, belonged to the large family of the pious Hyperboreans, to whose hecatombs came all the gods (Homer, Iliad, I.v.423; XIII. v.106; Pindar, Pyth. X.v.33; Pauly, Real-Encyclopadie, Aethiopia).

We find authentic traces of the extended cult of the great divinity of Dacia, until late in the historical epoch.

Even from the most obscure times of prehistory, various pastoral Pelasgian tribes emigrated from the Lower Danube, and after passing over Thrace, over Hellespont and Phrygia, settled in the lands of Cappadocia in Asia Minor, near the mountains called Taurus, Anti-Taurus, Amanus, and near the sources of the Euphrates. These colonies of mountain shepherds, descended from the heights of the Carpathians, took also with them the sacred memory of the supreme divinity venerated in their country. Even around the beginning of the Christian era, they worshipped in Cappadocia the great God from the north of the Istru, called by them Zeus Dachie, and this Zeus Dacie had with them a particular pontificate (Strabo, Geographica (Ed. Didot), lib. XII. 2.5).

One characteristic belief of all the Pelasgian tribes was that their national God listens and understands better their prayers and needs.

Apart from the archaic cult of Zeus Dacie, we find at the Pelasgians of Cappadocia another religious reminiscence from their European country.

They said, according to what Pausanias tells us (lib. III. 16.8), that the sacred image of Diana, so much venerated in Taurica (Crimea), was in their possession. Finally, they also venerated the great divinity of the Earth, the “Great Mother”, under the name of Ma (Strabo, Geogr. lib. XII. 2. 3).

Apart from their religious beliefs and traditions, their idiom also had a very pronounced Pelasgian character. Part of the localities occupied by these Pelasgians of Cappadocia, as we can ascertain from the writings of antiquity, had the names of: Cerasus, Morthula, Gauraena, Campae, Corna, Corne, Domana, Orsa, Dascusa, Dagusa (Ptolemy, lib. V.c.6), Dacora (Sozomenis, Hist. eccles. VII.17), Rimnena or Romnena (Strabo, Geographica, Ed. Didot, lib. XII. 1. 4). A river is called Apsorrhus (Ptolemy, lib. V. 6; Romanian “apsora”, diminutive for water, apa) and a mountain Scordicus (Ptolemy, lib. V.6.; Scordisci, people in Upper Pannonia, Scardus, mountain of Illyria).

The Romans treated them as friends and allies, gave them all the freedoms they asked for, even the right to have a king of their own (Diodorus Siculus, lib. XXXI. 19; Strabo, Geogr. lib.XII. 2. 11), while the emperor Claudius founded in Cappadocia a Roman colony in the city named Archelais (Pliny, H.N. VI.3.1). These are very eloquent testimonies about their Pelasgo-Latin character.

But primitive traces of the religion, whose powerful centre had once been in the Carpathians of Dacia, appear not only on the territory of Cappadocia.

The cult of Zeus Dacie was also dominant even from the most obscure times, in Crete, the large and fertile island of the Mediterranean. The most ancient inhabitants of this island were Pelasgian of origin, as their traditions, beliefs, cult and institutions attest.

Diodorus Siculus tells us that they were called Dactyli, meaning Dactuli, mountain tribes identical with the Corybanti (Strabo, Geogr. lib. X. 3.7. seqq), the sons of Saturn. (Stesimbrotus, contemporary of Pericles, considers the Dactyli as the sons of Zeus, and the Corybanti as descendents of Saturn – Frag. Hist. Graec. II p.57 – exactly as the Latins called themselves Saturni gens - Virgil, Aen. VII. 203). Their particular weapons were the bow and arrows (Plato, Vol.II, Ed.Didot, p.263; Pausanias, lib. I. 23. 4), and they were the first people in those parts who extracted metals from the earth and processed them.

The inhabitants of Crete represented their great Zeus surrounded by the seven stars of Ursa Major, until late in the historical epoch (Duruy, Hist. de Grecs, I. p.187), a hieratical symbolic expression of their worship of the supreme divinity of the Pelasgians from the north of Istru.

The authors of antiquity considered that under Ursa Major dwelt the Getae and the Scythians.

The poet Ovid, in his sad elegies from Tomis, writes (Trist. Lib. V. 3.v.7-8) that he dwells in a barbarian land, on the shores of the Black Sea, under the constellation of Ursa, where live the Getae and the Scythians. And with St.Paulinus, the Dacians are the ones who dwell under the constellation of Ursa Major (Coleti, Illyricum sacrum. Tom. VIII. P.81).

It is the same religious tradition which dominated in Cappadocia and in Crete.

These tribes of shepherds and mine workers, removed from the Carpathians during the times of power and expansion of the Pelasgian race, had still kept as inheritance the cult and institutions of the religion of Zeus Dacie, exactly as the inhabitants of Delos and Delphi worshipped with a special fervor Apollo the Hyperborean, called also Apollo Dicaeus (Pliny, H. H. lib. XXXIV.c.19.10), where Dicia was only a geographical variant of the name Dacia (C.I. L. III, p.169).

This Zeus Dachie appears also with the name of Dokius filius Caeli in the ancient traditions of the Pelasgians, who, as Gellius tells us, had been the first to teach the people to build edifices from clay (Pliny, H. N. VII. 57.4). By his genealogy and by his civilizing role, this Dokius filius Caeli was identical with Saturn, the son of the Sky, of the Greek theogonies. Dokius is a simple eponym, he was a genial representative of the Pelasgian race of Dacia, exactly as Scythes, the son of Jove, who had invented the bow and arrows (Ibid. lib. VII. 57.9), indicates by his name, that his country of origin was Scythia.

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