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In Greek mythology, Astrape (Ancient Greek: Ἀστραπή, lit. 'lightning, gleam, flash') and Bronte (Ancient Greek: Βροντή, lit. 'thunder') are personifications of lightning and thunder, respectively.

Iconographic representations

On an Apulian loutrophoros dating to around 330 BC, Astrape stands beside the throne of Zeus bearing the armaments of the sky-god. She also wields a torch and is a crowned with a shining aureole. According to Pliny the Elder, Astrape and Bronte were among the figures depicted by the 4th-century BCE painter Apelles.

The 3rd-century BCE writer Philostratus the Elder, in his Imagines, mentions that the two figures are featured in a painting of the death of Semele:

Brontè stern of face, and Astrapè flashing light from her eyes, and raging fire from heaven that has laid hold of a king’s house, suggest the following tale, if it is one you know. A cloud of fire encompassing Thebes breaks into the dwelling of Cadmus as Zeus comes wooing Semele; and Semele apparently is destroyed, but Dionysus is born, by Zeus, so I believe, in the presence of the fire.

Literary references

Bronte is mentioned (as Βρονταί, "Thunder") among the figures listed in the proem of the Orphic Hymns, a 2nd- or 3nd-century AD collection of hymns originating from Asia Minor; in spite of this, the collection contains hymns to "Zeus the Thunderbolt" (Zeus Keuranos) and "Zeus of the Lightning" (Zeus Astrapeus) but not "Zeus of the Thunder", with both Thunderbolt and Lightning going unmentioned in the proem. Astrape is also, in a scholium on Euripides, the name of the one of the horses of Helios.

Notes

1. Montanari, s.v. ἀστραπή, p. 322.
2. Montanari, s.v. βροντή, p. 407.
3. RE, s.vv. Astrape, Bronte (1).
4. Digital LIMC 208 (Astrape (S) 5); J. Paul Getty Museum Malibu 86.AE.680.
5. RE, s.vv. Astrape, Bronte (1); Pliny the Elder, Natural History 35.96 (Rackham, pp. 332, 333).
6. Philostratus the Elder, Imagines 1.14 (Fairbanks, pp. 58, 59).
7. RE, s.v. Bronte (1); Orphic Hymns Proem 39 (Ricciardelli, pp. 10, 11).
8. Athanassakis and Wolkow, p. 72.
9. RE, s.v. Astrape; Scholia on Euripides' The Phoenician Women, 3.

References

• Athanassakis, Apostolos N., and Benjamin M. Wolkow, The Orphic Hymns, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. ISBN 9781421408828. Internet Archive.
• Montanari, Franco, The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek, edited by Madeleine Goh and Chad Schroeder, Leiden, Brill, 2015. ISBN 978-90-04-19318-5.
• Philostratus the Elder, Imagines, in Philostratus the Elder, Imagines. Philostratus the Younger, Imagines. Callistratus, Descriptions, translated by Arthur Fairbanks, Loeb Classical Library No. 256, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1931. ISBN 978-06-749-9282-5. Harvard University Press. Internet Archive (1926 edition).
• Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Band II, Halbband 2, Stuttgart, J. B. Metzler, 1896. Wikisource.
• Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Band III, Halbband 1, Stuttgart, J. B. Metzler, 1897. Wikisource.
• Ricciardelli, Gabriella, Inni Orfici, Milan, Mondadori, 2000. ISBN 8804476613.

Furhter reading

• Castro, María Cruz Fernández, "Bronte", in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). III.1: Atherion – Eros, Zürich and Munich, Artemis Verlag, 1986. ISBN 3760887511. Internet Archive.
• Queyrel, François, "Astrape", in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). II.1: Aphrodisias – Athena, Zürich and Munich, Artemis Verlag, 1984. ISBN 3760887511. Internet Archive.

External links

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