Altars were set up within these enclosures and sacrifices
offered on them. Several such places are known from inscriptions to
have existed in Athens.
Thus when ancient Greek kings claimed to be descended from Zeus, and
even to bear his name, we may reasonably suppose that they also
attempted to exercise his divine functions by making thunder and
rain for the good of their people or the terror and confusion of
their foes. In this respect the legend of Salmoneus probably
reflects the pretensions of a whole class of petty sovereigns who
reigned of old, each over his little canton, in the oak-clad
highlands of Greece. Like their kinsmen the Irish kings, they were
expected to be a source of fertility to the land and of fecundity to
the cattle; and how could they fulfil these expectations better than
by acting the part of their kinsman Zeus, the great god of the oak,
the thunder, and the rain? They personified him, apparently, just as
the Italian kings personified Jupiter.
In ancient Italy every oak was sacred to Jupiter, the Italian
counterpart of Zeus; and on the Capitol at Rome the god was
worshipped as the deity not merely of the oak, but of the rain and
the thunder.
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