soul that but for it would have died without sign, although it is thus “Sartor,” in the way of apostrophe, underrates it:  “Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained thee; thou canst love the Earth while it injures thee, and even because it injures thee; for this a Greater than Zeno was needed, and he too was sent” (342-270 B.C.).  See STOICS, THE.

ZENOBIA, queen of Palmyra and ultimately of the East, whose ambition provoked the jealousy of the Emperor Aurelian, who marched an army against her, and after a succession of defeats subdued her and brought her to Rome to adorn his triumph as conqueror, though afterwards he presented her with a domain at Tivoli, where she spent the rest of her days in queen-like dignity, with her two sons by her side; she was a woman of great courage and surpassing beauty.  See LONGINUS.

ZEPHANIAH, a Hebrew prophet who prophesied in the interval between the decline and fall of Nineveh and the hostile advance of Babylon; forewarned the nation of the judgment of God impending over them for their ungodliness, and exhorted them to repentance as the only way of averting the inevitable doom, while he at the same time encouraged the faithful to persevere in their godly course with the assurance that the day of judgment would be succeeded by a day of glorious deliverance, that they would yet become “a name and a praise among the people of the earth.”

ZEPHON (searcher of secrets), name of a cherub sent, along with ITHURIEL (q. v.), by the archangel Gabriel to find out the whereabouts of Satan after his flight from hell.

ZEPHYRUS, a personification in the Greek mythology of the West Wind, and in love with Flora.

ZERMATT, a small village of the canton Valais, in Switzerland, 23 in.  SW. of Brieg, a great centre of tourists and the starting-point in particular for the ascent of the Matterhorn.

ZERO, a word of Arab origin signifying a cipher, and employed to denote a neutral point in scale between an ascending and descending series, or between positive and negative.

ZEUS, the chief deity of the Greeks, the sovereign ruler of the world, the father of gods and men, the mightiest of the gods, and to whose will as central all must bow; he was the son of Kronos and Rhea; by the help of his brothers and sisters dethroned his father, seized the sovereign power, and appointed them certain provinces of the universe to administer in his name—­Hera to rule with him as queen above, Poseidon over the sea, Pluto over the nether world, Demeter over the fruits of the earth, Hestia over social life of mankind; to his dynasty all the powers in heaven and earth were more or less related, descended from it and dependent on it; and he himself was to the Greeks the symbol of the intelligence which was henceforth to be the life and light of men, an idea which is reflected in the name Jupiter given him by the Romans, which means “father of the day”; he is represented as having his throne in heaven, and as wielding a thunderbolt in his right hand, in symbol of the jealousy with which he guards the order of the world established under him as chief.