§ 1. The Diffusion of the Oak in Europe

|The Latin kings represented Jupiter, the god of the oak, the sky, the thunder, and the rain.| In a preceding chapter some reasons were given for thinking that the early Latin kings posed as living representatives of Jupiter, the god of the oak, the sky, the rain, and the thunder, and that in this capacity they attempted to exercise the fertilising functions which were ascribed to the god. The probability of this view will be strengthened if it can be proved that the same god was worshipped under other names by other branches of the Aryan stock in Europe, and that the Latin kings were not alone in arrogating to themselves his powers and attributes. In this chapter I propose briefly to put together a few of the principal facts which point to this conclusion.

|Why should the god of the oak be also the god of the sky, the thunder, and the rain?| But at the outset a difficulty presents itself. To us the oak, the sky, the rain, and the thunder appear things totally distinct from each other. How did our forefathers come to group them together and imagine them as attributes of one and the same god? A connexion may be seen between the sky, the rain, and the thunder; but what has any of them to do with the oak? Yet one of these apparently disparate elements was probably the original nucleus round which in time the others gathered and crystallised into the composite conception of Jupiter. Accordingly we must ask, Which of them was the original centre of attraction? If men started with the idea of an oak-god, how came they to enlarge his kingdom by annexing to it the province of the sky, the rain, and the thunder? If, on the other hand, they set out with the notion of a god of the sky, the rain, and the thunder, or any one of them, why should they have added the oak to his attributes? The oak is terrestrial; the sky, the thunder, and the rain are celestial or aerial. What is the bridge between the two?

|In the composite character of Jupiter the oak is probably primary, the sky, the rain, and the thunder secondary and derivative.| In the sequel I shall endeavour to shew that on the principle of primitive thought the evolution of a sky-god from an oak-god is more easily conceivable than the converse; and if I succeed, it becomes probable that in the composite character of Jupiter the oak is primary and original, the sky, the rain, and the thunder secondary and derivative.

|Europe covered with vast oak forests in prehistoric times.| We have seen that long before the dawn of history Europe was covered with vast primaeval woods, which must have exercised a profound influence on the thought as well as on the life of our rude ancestors who dwelt dispersed under the gloomy shadow or in the open glades and clearings of the forest.[[1111]] Now, of all the trees which composed these woods the oak appears to have been both the commonest and the most useful. The proof of this is drawn partly from the statements of classical writers, partly from the remains of ancient villages built on piles in lakes and marshes, and partly from the oak forests which have been found embedded in peat-bogs.

|Remains of oak forests found in peat-bogs.| These bogs, which attain their greatest development in Northern Europe, but are met with also in the central and southern parts of the Continent, have preserved as in a museum the trees and plants which sprang up and flourished after the end of the glacial epoch. Thus in Scotland the peat, which occupies wide areas both in the highlands and lowlands, almost everywhere covers the remains of forests, among which the commoner trees are pine, oak, and birch. The oaks are of great size, and are found at heights above the sea such as the tree would not now naturally attain to. Equally remarkable for their size are the pines, but though they also had a wider distribution than at present, they appear not to have formed any extensive forests at the lowest levels of the country. Still, remains of them have been dug up in many lowland peat-mosses, where the bulk of the buried timber is oak.[[1112]] When Hatfield Moss in Yorkshire was drained, there were found in it trunks of oak a hundred feet long and as black as ebony. One giant actually measured a hundred and twenty feet in length, with a diameter of twelve feet at the root and six feet at the top. No such tree now exists in Europe.[[1113]] Sunken forests and peat occur at many places on the coasts of England, especially on low shelving shores where the land falls away with a gentle slope to the sea. These submerged areas were once mud flats which, as the sea retreated from them, gradually became clothed with dense forests, chiefly of oak and Scotch fir, though ash, yew, alder, and other trees sooner or later mingled with them.[[1114]] The great peat-bogs of Ireland shew that there was a time when vast woods of oak and yew covered the country, the oak growing on the hills up to a height of four hundred feet or thereabout above the sea, while at higher levels deal was the prevailing timber. Human relics have often been discovered in these Irish bogs, and ancient roadways made of oak have also come to light.[[1115]] In the peat-bog near Abbeville, in the valley of the Somme, trunks of oak have been dug up fourteen feet thick, a diameter rarely met with outside the tropics in the old Continent.[[1116]]

|Former oak woods of Denmark and Scandinavia.| At present the woods of Denmark consist for the most part of magnificent beeches, which flourish here as luxuriantly as anywhere in the world. Oaks are much rarer and appear to be on the decline. Yet the evidence of the peat-bogs proves that before the advent of the beech the country was overspread with dense forests of tall and stately oaks. It was during the ascendency of the oak in the woods that bronze seems to have become known in Denmark; for swords and shields of that metal, now in the museum of Copenhagen, have been taken out of peat in which oaks abound. Yet at a still earlier period the oak had been preceded by the pine or Scotch fir in the Danish forests; and the discovery of neolithic implements in the peat-bogs shews that savages of the Stone Age had their homes in these old pine woods as well as in the later forests of oak. Some antiquaries are of opinion that the Iron Age in Denmark began with the coming of the beech, but of this there is no evidence; for aught we know to the contrary the beautiful beech forests may date back to the Age of Bronze.[[1117]] The peat-bogs of Norway abound in buried timber; and in many of them the trees occur in two distinct layers. The lower of these layers consists chiefly of oak, hazel, ash, and other deciduous trees; the upper is composed of Scotch firs and birches. In the bogs of Sweden also the oak forests underlie the pine forests.[[1118]] However, it appears to be doubtful whether Scandinavia was inhabited in the age of the oak woods. Neolithic tools have indeed been found in the peat, but generally not deeper down than two feet or so; hence one antiquary infers that in these bogs not more than two feet of peat has formed within historical times.[[1119]] But negative evidence on such a point goes for little, as only a small portion of the bogs can have been explored.

|The ancient lake dwellings of Europe were built to a great extent on oaken piles.| Unequivocal proof of the prevalence of the oak and its usefulness to man in early times is furnished by the remains of the pile villages which have been discovered in many of the lakes of Europe. In the British Islands the piles and the platforms on which these crannogs or lake dwellings rested appear to have been generally of oak, though fir, birch, and other trees were sometimes used in their construction. Speaking of the Irish and Scotch crannogs a learned antiquary remarks: “Every variety of structure observed in the one country is to be found in the other, from the purely artificial island, framed of oak-beams, mortised together, to the natural island, artificially fortified or enlarged by girdles of oak-piles or ramparts of loose stones.”[[1120]] Canoes hollowed out of trunks of oak have been found both in the Scotch and in the Irish crannogs.[[1121]] In the lake dwellings of Switzerland and Central Europe the piles are very often of oak, but by no means as uniformly so as in the British Islands; fir, birch, alder, ash, elm, and other timber were also employed for the purpose.[[1122]] That the inhabitants of these villages subsisted partly on the produce |The inhabitants of the lake dwellings subsisted partly on acorns.| of the oak, even after they had adopted agriculture, is proved by the acorns which have been found in their dwellings along with wheat, barley, and millet, as well as beech-nuts, hazel-nuts, and the remains of chestnuts and cherries.[[1123]] In the valley of the Po the framework of logs and planks which supports the prehistoric villages is most commonly of elm wood, but evergreen oak and chestnut were also used; and the abundance of oaks is attested by the great quantities of acorns which were dug up in these settlements. As the acorns were sometimes found stored in earthenware vessels, it appears that they were eaten by the people as well as by their pigs.[[1124]]

|Evidence of classical writers as to the oak forests of Europe.| The evidence of classical writers proves that great oak forests still existed down to their time in various parts of Europe. Thus the Veneti on the Atlantic coast of Brittany made their flat-bottomed boats out of oak timber, of which, we are told, there was abundance in their country.[[1125]] Pliny informs us that, while the whole of Germany was covered with cool and shady woods, the loftiest trees were to be seen not far from the country of the Chauci, who inhabited the coast of the North Sea. Among these giants of the forest he speaks especially of the oaks which grew on the banks of two lakes. When the waves had undermined their roots, the oaks are said to have torn away great portions of the bank and floated like islands on the lakes.[[1126]] The same |The oak woods of Germany.| writer speaks of the vast Hercynian wood of Germany as an oak forest, old as the world, untouched for ages, and passing wonderful in its immortality. So huge were the trees, he says, that when their roots met they were forced up above ground in the shape of arches, through which a troop of horse could ride as through an open gate.[[1127]] His testimony as to the kind of trees which composed this famous forest is confirmed by its name, which seems to mean no more than “oak wood.”[[1128]] In the second century before our era oak forests were still so common in the valley of the Po that the herds of swine which browsed on the acorns sufficed to |The oak woods of ancient Italy and Greece.| supply the greater part of the demand for pork throughout Italy, although nowhere in the world, according to Polybius, were more pigs butchered to feed the gods, the people, and the army.[[1129]] Elsewhere the same historian describes the immense herds of swine which roamed the Italian oak forests, especially on the coasts of Tuscany and Lombardy. In order to sort out the different droves when they mingled with each other in the woods, each swineherd carried a horn, and when he wound a blast on it all his own pigs came trooping to him with such vehemence that nothing could stop them; for all the herds knew the note of their own horn. In the oak forests of Greece this device was unknown, and the swineherds there had harder work to come by their own when the beasts had strayed far in the woods, as they were apt to do in autumn while the acorns were falling.[[1130]] Down to the beginning of our era oak woods were interspersed among the olive groves and vineyards of the Sabine country in central Italy.[[1131]] Among the beautiful woods which clothed the Heraean mountains in Sicily the oaks were particularly remarked for their stately growth and the great size of their acorns.[[1132]] In the second century after Christ the oak forests of Arcadia still harboured wild boars, bears, and huge tortoises in their dark recesses.[[1133]]

|The oak still the chief forest tree of Europe.| Even now the predominance of the oak as the principal forest tree of Europe has hardly passed away. Thus we are told that among the leaf-bearing trees of Greece, as opposed to the conifers, the oak still plays by far the most important part in regard both to the number of the individuals and the number of the species.[[1134]] And the British oak in particular (Quercus robur) is yet the prevailing tree in most of the woods of France, Germany, and southern Russia, while in England the coppice and the few fragments of natural forest still left are mainly composed of this species.[[1135]]

|In Europe acorns have been used as human food both in ancient and modern times.| Thus the old classical tradition that men lived upon acorns before they learned to till the ground[[1136]] may very well be founded on fact. Indeed acorns were still an article of diet in some parts of southern Europe within historical times. Speaking of the prosperity of the righteous, Hesiod declares that for them the earth bears much substance, and the oak on the mountains puts forth acorns.[[1137]] The Arcadians in their oak-forests were proverbial for eating acorns,[[1138]] but not the acorns of all oaks, only those of a particular sort.[[1139]] Pliny tells us that in his day acorns still constituted the wealth of many nations, and that in time of dearth they were ground and baked into bread.[[1140]] According to Strabo, the mountaineers of Spain subsisted on acorn bread for two-thirds of the year;[[1141]] and in that country acorns were served up as a second course even at the meals of the well-to-do.[[1142]] In the same regions the same practice |Acorns as food in modern Europe.| has survived to modern times. The commonest and finest oak of modern Greece is the Quercus Aegilops, with a beautiful crown of leaves, and the peasants eat its acorns both roasted and raw.[[1143]] The sweeter acorns of the Quercus Ballota also serve them as food, especially in Arcadia.[[1144]] In Spain people eat the acorns of the evergreen oak (Quercus Ilex), which are known as bellotas, and are said to be much larger and more succulent than the produce of the British oak. The duchess in Don Quixote writes to Sancho’s wife to send her some of them. But oaks are now few and far between in La Mancha.[[1145]] Even in England and France acorns have been boiled and eaten by the poor as a substitute for bread in time of dearth.[[1146]] And naturally the use of acorns as food for swine has also lasted into modern times. It is on acorns that those hogs are fattened in Estremadura which make the famous Montanches hams.[[1147]] Large herds of swine in all the great oak woods of Germany depend on acorns for their autumn subsistence; and in the remaining royal forests of England the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages still claim their ancient right of pannage, turning their hogs into the woods in October and November.[[1148]]

§ 2. The Aryan God of the Oak and the Thunder[[1149]]

|The many benefits received by the ancient Aryans from the oak naturally led them to worship the tree.| Thus we may conclude that the primitive Aryans of Europe lived among oak woods, used oak sticks for the lighting of their fires, and oak timber for the construction of their villages, their roads, their canoes, fed their swine on acorns, and themselves subsisted in part on the same simple diet. No wonder, then, if the tree from which they received so many benefits should play an important part in their religion, and should be invested with a sacred character. We have seen that the worship of trees has been world-wide, and that, beginning with a simple reverence and dread of the tree as itself animated by a powerful spirit, it has |The worship of the tree itself gradually grew into a worship of the god of the tree, but no sharp line of distinction can be drawn between the two.| gradually grown into a cult of tree gods and tree goddesses, who with the advance of thought become more and more detached from their old home in the trees, and assume the character of sylvan deities and powers of fertility in general, to whom the husbandman looks not merely for the prosperity of his crops, but for the fecundity of his cattle and his women. Where this evolution has taken place it has necessarily been slow and long. Though it is convenient to distinguish in theory between the worship of trees and the worship of gods of the trees, it is impossible to draw a hard and fast line between them in practice, and to say, “Here the one begins and the other ends.” Such distinctions, however useful they may be as heads of classification to the student, evade in general the duller wit of the tree worshipper. We cannot therefore hope to lay our finger on that precise point in the history of the Aryans when they ceased to worship the oak for its own sake, and began to worship a god of the oak. That point, if it were ideally possible to mark it, had doubtless been left far behind them by the more intelligent, at least, of our forefathers before they emerged into the light of history. We must be content for the most part to find among them gods of whom the oak was an attribute or sacred adjunct rather than the essence. If we wish to find the original worship of the tree itself we must go for it to the ignorant peasantry of to-day, not to the enlightened writers of antiquity. Further, it is to be borne in mind that while all oaks were probably the object of superstitious awe, so that the felling of any of them for timber or firewood would be attended with ceremonies designed to appease the injured spirit of the tree,[[1150]] only certain particular groves or individual oaks would in general receive that measure of homage which we should term worship. The reasons which led men to venerate some trees more than others might be various. Amongst them the venerable age and imposing size of a giant oak would naturally count for much. And any other striking peculiarity which marked a tree off from its fellows would be apt to attract the attention, and to concentrate on itself the vague superstitious awe of the savage. We know, for example, that with the Druids the growth of mistletoe on an oak was a sign that the tree was especially sacred; and the rarity of this feature—for mistletoe does not commonly grow on oaks—would enhance the sanctity and mystery of the tree. For it is the strange, the wonderful, the rare, not the familiar and commonplace, which excites the religious emotions of mankind.

|The worship of the oak tree or of the oak god seems to have been common to all the Aryans of Europe.| The worship of the oak tree or of the oak god appears to have been shared by all the branches of the Aryan stock in Europe. Both Greeks and Italians associated the tree |Worship of the oak in Greece; its association with Zeus.| with their highest god, Zeus or Jupiter, the divinity of the sky, the rain, and the thunder.[[1151]] Perhaps the oldest and certainly one of the most famous sanctuaries in Greece was that of Dodona, where Zeus was revered in the oracular oak.[[1152]] The thunder-storms which are said to rage at Dodona more frequently than anywhere else in Europe,[[1153]] would render the spot a fitting home for the god whose voice was heard alike in the rustling of the oak leaves and in the crash of thunder. Perhaps the bronze gongs which kept up a humming in the wind round the sanctuary[[1154]] were meant to mimick the thunder that might so often be heard rolling and rumbling in the coombs of the stern and barren mountains which shut in the gloomy valley.[[1155]] In Boeotia, as we have seen, the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera, the oak god and the oak goddess, was celebrated with much pomp by a religious federation of states.[[1156]] And on Mount Lycaeus in Arcadia the character of Zeus as god both of the oak and of the rain comes out clearly in the rain charm practised by the priest of Zeus, who dipped an oak branch in a sacred spring.[[1157]]

|Zeus as the rain god of the Greeks.| In his latter capacity Zeus was the god to whom the Greeks regularly prayed for rain. Nothing could be more natural; for often, though not always, he had his seat on the mountains where the clouds gather and the oaks grow. On the acropolis at Athens there was an image of Earth praying to Zeus for rain.[[1158]] And in time of drought the Athenians themselves prayed, “Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, on the cornland of the Athenians and on the plains.”[[1159]] The mountains which lay round their city, and to which they looked through the clear Attic air for signs of the weather, were associated by them with the worship of the weather-god Zeus. It was a sign of rain when, away to sea, a cloud rested on the sharp peak of Aegina, which cuts the sky-line like a blue horn.[[1160]] On this far-seen peak Panhellenian Zeus was worshipped,[[1161]] and legend ran that once, when all Greece was parched with drought, envoys assembled in Aegina from every quarter and entreated Aeacus, the king of the island, that he would intercede with his father Zeus for rain. The king complied with the request, and by sacrifices and prayers wrung the needed showers from his sire the sky-god.[[1162]]

|Zeus as the god of fertility.| Again, it was a sign of rain at Athens when clouds in summer lay on the top or the sides of Hymettus,[[1163]] the chain of barren mountains which bounds the Attic plain on the east, facing the westering sun and catching from his last beams a solemn glow of purple light. If during a storm a long bank of clouds was seen lowering on the mountain, it meant that the storm would increase in fury.[[1164]] Hence an altar of Showery Zeus stood on Hymettus.[[1165]] Again, omens of weather were drawn when lightning flashed or clouds hung on the top of Mount Parnes to the north of Athens;[[1166]] and there accordingly an altar was set up to sign-giving Zeus.[[1167]] The climate of eastern Argolis is dry, and the rugged mountains are little better than a stony waterless wilderness. On one of them, named Mount Arachnaeus, or the Spider Mountain, stood altars of Zeus and Hera, and when rain was wanted the people sacrificed there to the god and goddess.[[1168]] On the ridge of Mount Tmolus, near Sardes, there was a spot called the Birthplace of Rainy Zeus,[[1169]] probably because clouds resting on it were observed to presage rain. The members of a religious society in the island of Cos used to go in procession and offer sacrifices on an altar of Rainy Zeus, when the thirsty land stood in need of refreshing showers.[[1170]] Thus conceived as the source of fertility, it was not unnatural that Zeus should receive the title of the Fruitful One,[[1171]] and that at Athens he should be worshipped under the surname of the Husbandman.[[1172]]

|Zeus as the god of thunder and lightning.| Again, Zeus wielded the thunder and lightning as well as the rain.[[1173]] At Olympia and elsewhere he was worshipped under the surname of Thunderbolt;[[1174]] and at Athens there was a sacrificial hearth of Lightning Zeus on the city wall, where some priestly officials watched for lightning over Mount Parnes at certain seasons of the year.[[1175]] Further, spots which had been struck by lightning were regularly fenced in by the Greeks and consecrated to Zeus the Descender, that is, to the god who came down in the flash from heaven. Altars were set up within these enclosures and sacrifices offered on them. Several such places are known from inscriptions to have existed in Athens.[[1176]]

|The Greek kings personified Zeus, as the Italian kings personified Jupiter.| Thus when ancient Greek kings claimed to be descended from Zeus, and even to bear his name,[[1177]] 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[[1178]] 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;[[1179]] 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.[[1180]]

|Jupiter in Italy as the god of the oak, the thunder, and the rain.| In ancient Italy every oak was sacred to Jupiter, the Italian counterpart of Zeus;[[1181]] 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.[[1182]] Contrasting the piety of the good old times with the scepticism of an age when nobody thought that heaven was heaven, or cared a fig for Jupiter, a Roman writer tells us that in former days noble matrons used to go with bare feet, streaming hair, and pure minds, up the long Capitoline slope, praying to Jupiter for rain. And straightway, he goes on, it rained bucketsful, then or never, and everybody returned dripping like drowned rats. “But nowadays,” says he, “we are no longer religious, so the fields lie baking.”[[1183]] And as Jupiter conjured up the clouds and caused them to discharge their genial burden on the earth, so he drove them away and brought the bright Italian sky back once more. Hence he was worshipped under the titles of the Serene, he who restores serenity.[[1184]] Lastly, as god of the fertilising showers |Jupiter as the god of fertility.| he made the earth to bring forth; so people called him the Fruitful One.[[1185]]

|The god of the oak and the thunder among the northern Aryans.| When we pass from southern to central Europe we still meet with the great god of the oak and the thunder among the barbarous Aryans who dwelt in the vast primaeval forests.[[1186]] Thus among the Celts of Gaul the Druids esteemed nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the oak on which it grew; they chose groves of oaks for the scene of their solemn service, and they performed none of their rites without oak leaves.[[1187]] “The Celts,” says a Greek writer, “worship |Celtic worship of the oak.| Zeus, and the Celtic image of Zeus is a tall oak.”[[1188]] The Celtic conquerors who settled in Asia in the third century before our era appear to have carried the worship of the oak with them to their new home; for in the heart of Asia Minor the Galatian senate met in a place which bore the pure Celtic name of Drynemetum, “the sacred oak grove” or “the temple of the oak.”[[1189]] Indeed the very name of Druids is believed by good authorities to mean no more than “oak men.”[[1190]] When Christianity displaced Druidism in Ireland, the churches and monasteries were sometimes built in oak groves or under solitary oaks,[[1191]] the choice of the site |Traces of sacred oaks in Ireland.| being perhaps determined by the immemorial sanctity of the trees, which might predispose the minds of the converts to receive with less reluctance the teaching of the new faith.[[1192]] But there is no positive evidence that the Irish Druids performed their rites, like their Gallic brethren, in oak groves,[[1193]] so that the inference from the churches of Kildare, Derry, and the rest is merely a conjecture based on analogy.

In the religion of the ancient Germans the veneration for sacred groves seems to have held the foremost place,[[1194]] and according to Grimm the chief of their holy trees was the oak.[[1195]] It appears to have been especially dedicated to the |The Teutonic god of the oak and the thunder.| god of thunder, Donar or Thunar, the equivalent of the Norse Thor; for a sacred oak near Geismar, in Hesse, which Boniface cut down in the eighth century, went among the heathen by the name of Jupiter’s oak (robur Jovis), which in old German would be Donares eih, “the oak of Donar.”[[1196]] That the Teutonic thunder god Donar, Thunar, Thor was identified with the Italian thunder god Jupiter appears from our word Thursday, Thunar’s day, which is merely a rendering of the Latin dies Jovis.[[1197]] Thus among the ancient Teutons, as among the Greeks and Italians, the god of the oak was also the god of the thunder. Moreover, he was regarded as the great fertilising power, who sent rain and caused the earth to bear fruit; for Adam of Bremen tells us that “Thor presides in the air; he it is who rules thunder and lightning, wind and rains, fine weather and crops.”[[1198]] In these respects, therefore, the Teutonic thunder god again resembled his southern counterparts Zeus and Jupiter. And like them Thor appears to have been the chief god of the pantheon; for in the great temple at Upsala his image |The worship of Thor at Upsala.| occupied the middle place between the images of Odin and Frey,[[1199]] and in oaths by this or other Norse trinities he was always the principal deity invoked.[[1200]] Beside the temple at Upsala there was a sacred grove, but the kinds of trees which grew in it are not known. Only of one tree are we told that it was of mighty size, with great spreading branches, and that it remained green winter and summer alike. Here too was a spring where sacrifices were offered. They used to plunge a living man into the water, and if he disappeared they drew a favourable omen. Every nine years, at the spring equinox, a great festival was held at Upsala in honour of Thor, the god of thunder, Odin, the god of war, and Frey, the god of peace and pleasure. The ceremonies lasted nine days. Nine male animals of every sort were sacrificed, that their blood might appease the gods. Each day six victims were slaughtered, of whom one was a man. Their bodies were fastened to the trees of the grove, where dogs and horses might be seen hanging beside men.[[1201]]

|Perun, the god of the oak and the thunder among the Slavs.| Amongst the Slavs also the oak appears to have been the sacred tree of the thunder god Perun, the counterpart of Zeus and Jupiter.[[1202]] It is said that at Novgorod there used to stand an image of Perun in the likeness of a man with a thunder-stone in his hand. A fire of oak wood burned day and night in his honour; and if ever it went out the attendants paid for their negligence with their lives.[[1203]] Perun seems, like Zeus and Jupiter, to have been the chief god of his people; for Procopius tells us that the Slavs “believe that one god, the maker of lightning, is alone lord of all things, and they sacrifice to him oxen and every victim.”[[1204]]

|Perkunas, the chief Lithuanian god.| The chief deity of the Lithuanians was Perkunas or Perkuns, the god of thunder and lightning, whose resemblance to Zeus and Jupiter has often been pointed out.[[1205]] Oaks were sacred to him, and when they were cut down by the Christian missionaries, the people loudly complained that their sylvan deities were destroyed.[[1206]] Perpetual fires, kindled with the wood of certain oak-trees, were kept up in honour of Perkunas; if such a fire went out, it was lighted again by friction of the sacred wood.[[1207]] Men sacrificed to oak-trees for good crops, while women did the same to lime-trees; from which we may infer that they regarded oaks as male and lime-trees as female.[[1208]] And in time of drought, when they wanted rain, they used to sacrifice a black heifer, a black he-goat, and a black cock to the thunder-god in the depths of the woods. On such occasions the people assembled in great numbers from the country round about, ate and drank, and called upon Perkunas. They carried a bowl of beer thrice round the fire, then poured the liquor on the flames, while they prayed to the god to send showers.[[1209]] Thus the chief Lithuanian deity presents a close resemblance to Zeus and Jupiter, since he was the god of the oak, the thunder, and the rain.[[1210]]

|The god of the oak and the thunder among the Esthonians.| Wedged in between the Lithuanians and the Slavs are the Esthonians, a people who do not belong to the Aryan family. But they also shared the reverence for the oak, and associated the tree with their thunder-god Taara, the deity of their pantheon, whom they called “Old Father,” or “Father of Heaven.”[[1211]] It is said that down to the beginning of the nineteenth century Esthonians used to smear the holy oaks, lime-trees, and ash-trees with the fresh blood of animals at least once a year.[[1212]] The following prayer to thunder is instructive, because it shews how easily thunder, through its association with rain, may appear to the rustic mind in the character of a beneficent and fertilising power. It was taken down from the lips of an Esthonian peasant |Esthonian prayer to thunder.| in the seventeenth century. “Dear Thunder,” he prayed, “we sacrifice to thee an ox, which has two horns and four claws, and we would beseech thee for the sake of our ploughing and sowing, that our straw may be red as copper, and our corn yellow as gold. Drive somewhere else all black, thick clouds over great marshes, high woods, and wide wastes. But to us ploughmen and sowers give a fruitful time and sweet rain. Holy Thunder, guard our fields, that they may bear good straw below, good ears above, and good grain within.”[[1213]] Sometimes in time of great drought an Esthonian farmer would carry beer thrice round a sacrificial fire, then pour it on the flames with a prayer that the thunder-god would be pleased to send rain.[[1214]]

|Parjanya, the old Indian god of thunder, rain, and fertility.| In like manner, Parjanya, the old Indian god of thunder and rain, whose name is by some scholars identified with the Lithuanian Perkunas,[[1215]] was conceived as a deity of fertility, who not only made plants to germinate, but caused cows, mares, and women to conceive. As the power who impregnated all things, he was compared to a bull, an animal which to the primitive herdsman is the most natural type of the procreative energies. Thus in a hymn of the Rigveda it is said of him:—

“The Bull, loud roaring, swift to send his bounty, lays in the plants the seed for germination.

He smites the trees apart, he slays the demons: all life fears him who wields the mighty weapon.

From him exceeding strong flees e’en the guiltless when thundering Parjanya smites the wicked.

“Like a car-driver whipping on his horses, he makes the messengers of rain spring forward.

Far off resounds the roaring of the lion what time Parjanya fills the sky with rain-cloud.

Forth burst the winds, down come the lightning-flashes: the plants shoot up, the realm of light is streaming.

Food springs abundant for all living creatures what time Parjanya quickens earth with moisture.”[[1216]]

In another hymn Parjanya is spoken of as “giver of growth to plants, the god who ruleth over the waters and all moving creatures,” and it is said that “in him all living creatures have their being.” Then the poet goes on:—

“May this my song to sovran lord Parjanya come near unto his heart and give him pleasure.

May we attain the showers that bring enjoyment, and god-protected plants with goodly fruitage.

He is the Bull of all, and their impregner: he holds the life of all things fixed and moving.”[[1217]]

And in yet another hymn we read:—

“Sing forth and laud Parjanya, son of Heaven, who sends the gift of rain:

May he provide our pasturage.

Parjanya is the god who forms in kine, in mares, in plants of earth

And womanhood, the germ of life.”[[1218]]

In short, “Parjanya is a god who presides over the lightning, the thunder, the rain, and the procreation of plants and living creatures. But it is by no means clear whether he is originally a god of the rain, or a god of the thunder. For, as both phenomena are always associated in India, either of the two opinions is admissible, if no deciding evidence comes from another quarter.”[[1219]] On this point something will be said presently. Here it is enough to have indicated the ease with which the notion of the thunder-god passes into, or is combined with, the idea of a god of fertility in general.

|God of thunder, rain, and fertility among the Iroquois.| The same combination meets us in Heno, the thunder-spirit of the Iroquois. His office was not only to hurl his bolts at evil-doers, but to cool and refresh the ground with showers, to ripen the harvest, and to mature the fruits of the earth. In spring, when they committed the seeds to the soil, the Indians prayed to him that he would water them and foster their growth: and at the harvest festival they thanked him for his gift of rain.[[1220]] The Hos |Goddess of lightning, rain, and fertility among the Hos.| of Togoland in West Africa distinguish two deities of the lightning, a god Sogble and a goddess Sodza, who are husband and wife and talk with each other in the sound of thunder. The goddess has epithets applied to her which seem to shew that she is believed to send the rain and to cause the plants to grow. She is addressed as “Mother of men and beasts, ship full of yams, ship full of the most varied fullness.” Further, it is said to be she who blesses the tilled land. Moreover, like the Hindoo thunder-god Parjanya, who slays demons, the Ho thunder-goddess drives away evil spirits and witches from people’s houses; under her protection children multiply and the inmates of the house remain healthy.[[1221]] The Indians of the Andes, about |Gods of thunder, rain, and fertility among the Indians of the Andes and the Abchases of the Caucasus.| Lake Titicaca, believe in a thunder-god named Con or Cun, whom they call the “lord” or “father” of the mountains (Ccollo-auqui). He is regarded as a powerful being, but irritable and difficult of access, who dwells on the high mountains above the line of perpetual snow. Yet he gives great gifts to those who win his favour; and when the crops are languishing for lack of rain, the Indians try to rouse the god from his torpor by pouring a small libation of brandy into a tarn below the snow-line; for they dare not set foot on the snow lest they should meet the dreadful thunder-god face to face. His bird is the condor as the eagle was the bird of the Greek thunder-god Zeus.[[1222]] Similarly in time of drought the Abchases of the Caucasus sacrifice an ox to Ap-hi, the god of thunder and lightning, and an old man prays him to send rain, thunder, and lightning, telling him that the crops are parched, the grass burnt up, and the cattle starving.[[1223]] These examples shew how readily a thunder-god may come to be viewed as a power of fertility; the connecting link is furnished by the fertilising rain which usually accompanies a thunder-storm.

|Traces of the worship of the oak in modern Europe.| As might have been expected, the ancient worship of the oak in Europe has left its print in popular custom and superstition down to modern times. Thus in the French department of Maine it is said that solitary oak-trees in the fields are still worshipped, though the priests have sought to give the worship a Christian colour by hanging images of saints on the trees.[[1224]] In various parts of Lower Saxony and Westphalia, as late as the first half of the nineteenth century, traces survived of the sanctity of certain oaks, to which the people paid a half-heathenish, half-Christian worship. In the principality of Minden young people of both sexes used to dance round an old oak on Easter Saturday with loud shouts of joy. And not far from the village of Wormeln, in the neighbourhood of Paderborn, there stood a holy oak in the forest, to which the inhabitants of Wormeln and Calenberg went every year in solemn procession.[[1225]] Another vestige of superstitious reverence for the oak in Germany is the custom of passing sick people and animals through a natural or artificial opening in the trunk of an oak for the purpose of healing them of their infirmities.[[1226]] At a village near Ragnit in East Prussia there was an oak which, down to the seventeenth century, the villagers regarded as sacred, firmly believing that any person who harmed it would be visited with misfortune, especially with some bodily ailment.[[1227]] About the middle of the nineteenth century the Lithuanians still laid offerings for spirits under ancient oaks;[[1228]] and old-fashioned people among them preferred to cook the viands for funeral banquets on a fire of oak-wood, or at least under an oak-tree.[[1229]] On the rivulet Micksy, between the governments of Pskov and Livonia in Russia, there stood a stunted, |Worship of the oak in modern Russia.| withered, but holy oak, which received the homage of the neighbouring peasantry down at least to 1874. An eye-witness has described the ceremonies. He found a great crowd of people, chiefly Esthonians of the Greek Church, assembled with their families about the tree, all dressed in gala costume. Some of them had brought wax candles and were fastening them about the trunk and in the branches. Soon a priest arrived, and, having donned his sacred robes, proceeded to sing a canticle, such as is usually sung in the Orthodox Church in honour of saints. But instead of saying as usual, “Holy saint, pray the Lord for us,” he said, “Holy Oak Hallelujah, pray for us.” Then he incensed the tree all round. During the service the tapers on the oak were lighted, and the people, throwing themselves on the ground, adored the holy tree. When the pastor had retired, his flock remained till late at night, feasting, drinking, dancing, and lighting fresh tapers on the oak, till everybody was drunk and the proceedings ended in an orgy.[[1230]]

|Ceremonial fires kindled by the friction of oak-wood.| Another relic of the ancient sanctity of the oak has survived to modern times in the practice of kindling ceremonial fires by means of the friction of oak-wood. This has been done, either at stated seasons of the year or on occasions of distress, by Slavs, Germans, and Celts.[[1231]] Taken together with the perpetual sacred fires of oak-wood which we have found among the Slavs, the Lithuanians, and the ancient Romans,[[1232]] the wide prevalence of the practice seems clearly to point back to a time when the forefathers of the Aryans in Europe dwelt in forests of oak, fed their fires with oak-wood, and rekindled them, when they chanced to go out, by rubbing two oaken sticks against each other.

|In the great European god of the oak, the thunder, and the rain, the original element seems to have been the oak.| From the foregoing survey of the facts it appears that a god of the oak, the thunder, and the rain was worshipped of old by all the main branches of the Aryan stock in Europe, and was indeed the chief deity of their pantheon.[[1233]] It was natural enough that the oak should loom large in the religion of people who lived in oak forests, used oak timber for building, oak sticks for fuel, and oak acorns for food and fodder; but we have still to explain how they were led to associate the thunder and the rain with the oak in their conception of this great divinity. From the nature of the case our solution of the problem must be conjectural; we can only guess at the |The clue to the development of a lightning-god out of an oak-god may have been the notion that the heavenly fire or lightning was made, like the earthly fire, by the friction of oak-wood.| train of thought which prompted our forefathers to link together things which to us seem so very different. Thunder and rain may indeed naturally be regarded as akin since the two so often occur together; but the difficulty is to understand why the oak should be joined with them. Which of the three elements was the original nucleus about which the others afterwards clustered? In our ignorance of the facts, this question amounts to asking whether, on the principles of savage thought, it is easier to suppose that an original god of thunder and rain should afterwards add the oak-tree to his attributes, or that, on the contrary, an old god of the oak should annex to himself the thunder and the rain? In favour of the first of these suppositions it may be said that a god of thunder and rain might in time be regarded as a god of the oak, because thunder and rain come from the sky, and the oak reaches skyward and is often struck by lightning.[[1234]] But this train of thought is hardly likely to carry conviction even to the mind of a savage. On the other hand, it is not difficult to imagine how early man in Europe might suppose the thunder, or rather the lightning, to be derived from the oak. Seeing that fire on earth was regularly kindled by the rubbing of oaken sticks together, he might readily infer that fire in heaven was produced in like manner; in other words, that the flash of lightning was the spark elicited by some one who was lighting his fire in the usual fashion up aloft; for the savage commonly explains natural phenomena by ideas drawn from the circle of his own daily life. Similarly, people who are accustomed to make fire by means of flints sometimes suppose that lightning is produced in the same way. This is reported of the Armenians,[[1235]] and it may be inferred of the many peoples who believe that the flint implements of prehistoric races are thunder-bolts.[[1236]]

|When an oak-god had once grown into a lightning-god, he would easily develop into a god of the rain and the sky.| Thus it is easy to conceive how a god of the oak, viewed as the source of earthly fire, should come to be regarded as a god of the lightning, and hence, by an easy extension of ideas, as a god of thunder and rain. Accordingly we may provisionally assume that the great Aryan gods who combine these various functions have been evolved in this fashion. A further step in their promotion would be taken when the whole sky was assigned to their dominion. The Greeks and Italians certainly advanced their Zeus and Jupiter to this lofty position;[[1237]] but there seems to be no evidence that the Aryans of the north ever raised their corresponding deities to the rank of sky-gods in general. It is commonly indeed assumed that the sky was the original province of all these deities, or rather of the single Aryan god from which they are descended. But on this theory it is hard to see why the god of the sky should have taken up with the oak, and not only that, but should have clung to it even after he had, in some places at least, begun to sit very loose to his old home, the vault of heaven. Surely his fidelity to the oak from the earliest to the latest times among all the different families of his European worshippers is a strong argument for regarding the tree as the primary, not a secondary, element in his composite nature.

CHAPTER XXI
DIANUS AND DIANA

|Recapitulation.| In this chapter I propose to recapitulate the conclusions to which the enquiry has thus far led us, and drawing together the scattered rays of light, to turn them on the dark figure of the priest of Nemi.

|Rise of sacred kings, who are supposed to be endowed with magical or divine powers.| We have found that at an early stage of society men, ignorant of the secret processes of Nature and of the narrow limits within which it is in our power to control and direct them, have commonly arrogated to themselves functions which in the present state of knowledge we should deem superhuman or divine. The illusion has been fostered and maintained by the same causes which begot it, namely, the marvellous order and uniformity with which Nature conducts her operations, the wheels of her great machine revolving with a smoothness and precision which enable the patient observer to anticipate in general the season, if not the very hour, when they will bring round the fulfilment of his hopes or the accomplishment of his fears. The regularly recurring events of this great cycle, or rather series of cycles, soon stamp themselves even on the dull mind of the savage. He foresees them, and foreseeing them mistakes the desired recurrence for an effect of his own will, and the dreaded recurrence for an effect of the will of his enemies. Thus the springs which set the vast machine in motion, though they lie far beyond our ken, shrouded in a mystery which we can never hope to penetrate, appear to ignorant man to lie within his reach: he fancies he can touch them and so work by magic art all manner of good to himself and evil to his foes. In time the fallacy of this belief becomes apparent to him: he discovers that there are things he cannot do, pleasures which he is unable of himself to procure, pains which even the most potent magician is powerless to avoid. The unattainable good, the inevitable ill, are now ascribed by him to the action of invisible powers, whose favour is joy and life, whose anger is misery and death. Thus magic tends to be displaced by |Transition from magic to religion.| religion, and the sorcerer by the priest. At this stage of thought the ultimate causes of things are conceived to be personal beings, many in number and often discordant in character, who partake of the nature and even of the frailty of man, though their might is greater than his, and their life far exceeds the span of his ephemeral existence. Their sharply-marked individualities, their clear-cut outlines have not yet begun, under the powerful solvent of philosophy, to melt and coalesce into that single unknown substratum of phenomena which, according to the qualities with which our imagination invests it, goes by one or other of the high-sounding names which the wit of man has devised to hide his ignorance. Accordingly, so long as men look on their gods as beings akin to themselves and not raised to an unapproachable height above them, they believe it to be possible for those of their own number who surpass their fellows to attain to the divine rank after death or even in life. Incarnate human deities of this latter sort may be said |Incarnate human deities.| to halt midway between the age of magic and the age of religion. If they bear the names and display the pomp of deities, the powers which they are supposed to wield are commonly those of their predecessor the magician. Like him, they are expected to guard their people against hostile enchantments, to heal them in sickness, to bless them with offspring, and to provide them with an abundant supply of food by regulating the weather and performing the other ceremonies which are deemed necessary to ensure the fertility of the earth and the multiplication of animals. Men who are credited with powers so lofty and far-reaching naturally hold the highest place in the land, and while the rift between the spiritual and the temporal spheres has not yet widened too far, they are supreme in civil as well as religious matters: in a word, they are kings as well as gods. Thus the divinity which hedges a king has its roots deep down in human history, and long ages pass before these are sapped by a profounder view of nature and man.

|The King of the Wood at Nemi seems to have been one of these divine kings and to have mated with the divine Queen of the Wood, Diana.| In the classical period of Greek and Latin antiquity the reign of kings was for the most part a thing of the past; yet the stories of their lineage, titles, and pretensions suffice to prove that they too claimed to rule by divine right and to exercise superhuman powers. Hence we may without undue temerity assume that the King of the Wood at Nemi, though shorn in later times of his glory and fallen on evil days, represented a long line of sacred kings who had once received not only the homage but the adoration of their subjects in return for the manifold blessings which they were supposed to dispense. What little we know of the functions of Diana in the Arician grove seems to prove that she was here conceived as a goddess of fertility, and particularly as a divinity of childbirth.[[1238]] It is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that in the discharge of these important duties she was assisted by her priest, the two figuring as King and Queen of the Wood in a solemn marriage, which was intended to make the earth gay with the blossoms of spring and the fruits of autumn, and to gladden the hearts of men and women with healthful offspring.

|Virbius, whom the King of the Wood represented, was probably a form of Jupiter regarded as god of the greenwood, and especially of the oak.| If the priest of Nemi posed not merely as a king, but as a god of the grove, we have still to ask, What deity in particular did he personate? The answer of antiquity is that he represented Virbius, the consort or lover of Diana.[[1239]] But this does not help us much, for of Virbius we know little more than the name. A clue to the mystery is perhaps supplied by the Vestal fire which burned in the grove.[[1240]] For the perpetual holy fires of the Aryans in Europe appear to have been commonly kindled and fed with oak-wood,[[1241]] and we have seen that in Rome itself, not many miles from Nemi, the fuel of the Vestal fire consisted of oaken sticks or logs, which in early days the holy maidens doubtless gathered or cut in the coppices of oak that once covered the Seven Hills.[[1242]] But the ritual of the various Latin towns seems to have been marked by great uniformity;[[1243]] hence it is reasonable to conclude that wherever in Latium a Vestal fire was maintained, it was fed, as at Rome, with wood of the sacred oak. If this was so at Nemi, it becomes probable that the hallowed grove there consisted of a natural oak-wood, and that therefore the tree which the King of the Wood had to guard at the peril of his life was itself an oak; indeed it was from an evergreen oak, according to Virgil, that Aeneas plucked the Golden Bough.[[1244]] Now the oak was the sacred tree of Jupiter, the supreme god of the Latins. Hence it follows that the King of the Wood, whose life was bound up in a fashion with an oak, personated no less a deity than Jupiter himself. At least the evidence, slight as it is, seems to point to this conclusion. The old Alban dynasty of the Silvii or Woods, with their crown of oak leaves, apparently aped the style and emulated the powers of Latian Jupiter, who dwelt on the top of the Alban Mount.[[1245]] It is not impossible that the King of the Wood, who guarded the sacred oak a little lower down the mountain, was the lawful successor and representative of this ancient line of the Silvii or Woods.[[1246]] At all events, if I am right in supposing that he passed for a human Jupiter, it would appear that Virbius, with whom legend identified him, was nothing but a local form of Jupiter, considered perhaps in his original aspect as a god of the greenwood.[[1247]]

|Diana and the oak.| The hypothesis that in later times at all events the King of the Wood played the part of the oak god Jupiter, is confirmed by an examination of his divine partner Diana. |Diana, the divine partner of the King of the Wood at Nemi, seems to have been especially associated with the oak.| For two distinct lines of argument converge to shew that if Diana was a queen of the woods in general, she was at Nemi a goddess of the oak in particular. In the first place, she bore the title of Vesta, and as such presided over a perpetual fire, which we have seen reason to believe was fed with oak wood.[[1248]] But a goddess of fire is not far removed from a goddess of the fuel which burns in the fire; primitive thought perhaps drew no sharp line of distinction between the blaze and the wood that blazes. In the second place, the nymph Egeria at Nemi appears to have been merely a form of Diana, and Egeria is definitely said to have been a Dryad, a nymph of the oak.[[1249]] Elsewhere in Italy the goddess had her home on oak-clad mountains. Thus Mount Algidus, a spur of the Alban hills, was covered in antiquity with dark forests of oak, both of the evergreen and the deciduous sort. In winter the snow lay long on these cold hills, and their gloomy oak-woods were believed to be a favourite haunt of Diana, as they have been of brigands in modern times.[[1250]] Again, Mount Tifata, the long abrupt ridge of the Apennines which looks down on the Campanian plain behind Capua, was wooded of old with evergreen oaks, among which Diana had a temple. Here Sulla thanked the goddess for his victory over the Marians in the plain below, attesting his gratitude by inscriptions which were long afterwards to be seen in the temple.[[1251]] On the whole, then, we conclude that at Nemi the King of the Wood personated the oak-god Jupiter and mated with the oak-goddess Diana in the sacred grove. An echo of their mystic union has come down to us in the legend of the loves of Numa and Egeria, who according to some had their trysting-place in these holy woods.[[1252]]

|In nature and in name Dianus (Janus) and Diana seem to be only dialectically different forms of Jupiter and Juno.| To this theory it may naturally be objected that the divine consort of Jupiter was not Diana but Juno, and that if Diana had a mate at all he might be expected to bear the name not of Jupiter, but of Dianus or Janus, the latter of these forms being merely a corruption of the former. All this is true, but the objection may be parried by observing that the two pairs of deities, Jupiter and Juno on the one side, and Dianus and Diana, or Janus and Jana, on the other side, are merely duplicates of each other, their names and their functions being in substance and origin identical. With regard to their names, all four of them come from the same Aryan root DI, meaning “bright,” which occurs in the names of the corresponding Greek deities, Zeus and his old female consort Dione.[[1253]] In regard to their functions, Juno and Diana were both goddesses of fecundity and childbirth, and both were sooner or later identified with the moon.[[1254]] As to the true nature and functions of Janus the ancients themselves were puzzled;[[1255]] and where they hesitated, it is not for us confidently to decide. But the view mentioned by Varro that Janus was the god of the sky[[1256]] is supported not only by the etymological identity of his name with that of the sky-god Jupiter, but also by the relation in which he appears to have stood to Jupiter’s two mates, Juno and Juturna. For the epithet Junonian bestowed on Janus[[1257]] points to a marriage union between the two deities; and according to one account Janus was the husband of the water-nymph Juturna,[[1258]] who according to others was beloved by Jupiter.[[1259]] Moreover, Janus, like Jove, was regularly invoked, and commonly spoken of, under the title of Father.[[1260]] Indeed, he was identified with Jupiter not merely by the logic of a Christian doctor,[[1261]] but by the piety of a pagan worshipper who dedicated an offering to Jupiter Dianus.[[1262]] A trace of his relation to the oak may be found in the oak-woods of the Janiculum, the hill on the right bank of the Tiber, where Janus is said to have reigned as a king in the remotest ages of Italian history.[[1263]]

|Zeus and Dione, Jupiter and Juno, Dianus (Janus) and Diana represent a single original pair of Aryan deities, which through purely dialectical differences of nomenclature gradually diverged from each other and came to be regarded as separate pairs of deities.| Thus, if I am right, the same ancient pair of deities was variously known among the Greek and Italian peoples as Zeus and Dione, Jupiter and Juno, or Dianus (Janus) and Diana (Jana), the names of the divinities being identical in substance, though varying in form with the dialect of the particular tribe which worshipped them. At first, when the peoples dwelt near each other, the difference between the deities would be hardly more than one of name; in other words, it would be almost purely dialectical. But the gradual dispersion of the tribes, and their consequent isolation from each other, would favour the growth of divergent modes of conceiving and worshipping the gods whom they had carried with them from their old home, so that in time discrepancies of myth and ritual would tend to spring up and thereby to convert a nominal into a real distinction between the divinities. Accordingly when, with the slow progress of culture, the long period of barbarism and separation was passing away, and the rising political power of a single strong community had begun to draw or hammer its weaker neighbours into a nation, the confluent peoples would throw their gods, like their dialects, into a common stock; and thus it might come about that the same ancient deities, which their forefathers had worshipped together before the dispersion, would now be so disguised by the accumulated effect of dialectical and religious divergencies that their original identity might fail to be recognised, and they would take their places side by side as independent divinities in the national pantheon.[[1264]]

|This explanation of Janus as equivalent to Jupiter is more probable than the view that Janus was originally nothing but the god of the door (janua); for the door (janua) seems rather to have been named after Janus than he after it.| This duplication of deities, the result of the final fusion of kindred tribes who had long lived apart, would account for the appearance of Janus beside Jupiter, and of Diana or Jana beside Juno in the Roman religion.[[1265]] At least this appears to be a more probable theory than the opinion, which has found favour with some modern scholars, that Janus was originally nothing but the god of doors.[[1266]] That a deity of his dignity and importance, whom the Romans revered as a god of gods[[1267]] and the father of his people, should have started in life as a humble, though doubtless respectable, doorkeeper appears to me, I confess, very unlikely. So lofty an end hardly consorts with so lowly a beginning. It is more probable that the door (janua) got its name from Janus than that he got his name from it. This view is strengthened by a consideration of the word janua itself. The regular word for door is the same in all the languages of the Aryan family from India to Ireland. It is dur in Sanscrit, thura in Greek, Tür in German, door in English, dorus in old Irish, and foris in Latin.[[1268]] Yet besides this ordinary name for door, which the Latins shared with all their Aryan brethren, they had also the name janua, to which there is no corresponding term in any Indo-European speech. The word has the appearance of being an adjectival form derived from the noun Janus. I conjecture that it may have been customary to set up an image or symbol of Janus at the principal door of the house in order to place the entrance under the protection of the great god. A door thus guarded might be known as a janua foris, that is, a Januan door, and the phrase might in time be abridged into janua, the noun foris being understood but not expressed. From this to the use of janua to designate a door in general, whether guarded by an image of Janus or not, would be an easy and natural transition.[[1269]]

|The double-headed figure of Janus may have originated in a custom of placing his image as guardian of doorways so as to face both ways, outwards and inwards, at the same time.| If there is any truth in this conjecture, it may explain very simply the origin of the double head of Janus, which has so long exercised the ingenuity of mythologists. When it had become customary to guard the entrance of houses and towns by an image of Janus, it might well be deemed necessary to make the sentinel god look both ways, before and behind, at the same time, in order that nothing should escape his vigilant eye. For if the divine watchman always faced in one direction, it is easy to imagine what mischief might have been wrought with impunity behind his back.

|This explanation is confirmed by the double-headed idols which the Bush negroes of Surinam set to guard the entrances of their villages.| This explanation of the double-headed Janus at Rome is confirmed by the double-headed idol which the Bush negroes in the interior of Surinam regularly set up as a guardian at the entrance of a village. The idol consists of a block of wood with a human face rudely carved on each side; it stands under a gateway composed of two uprights and a cross-bar. Beside the idol generally lies a white rag intended to keep off the devil; and sometimes there is also a stick which seems to represent a bludgeon or weapon of some sort. Further, from the cross-bar hangs a small log which serves the useful purpose of knocking on the head any evil spirit who might attempt to pass through the gateway.[[1270]] Clearly this double-headed fetish at the gateway of the negro villages in Surinam bears a close resemblance to the double-headed images of Janus which, grasping a stick in one hand and a key in the other, stood sentinel at Roman gates and doorways;[[1271]] and we can hardly doubt that in both cases the heads facing two ways are to be similarly explained as expressive of the vigilance of the guardian god, who kept his eye on spiritual foes behind and before, and stood ready to bludgeon them on the spot. We may, therefore, dispense with the tedious and unsatisfactory explanations which the wily Janus himself fobbed off an anxious Roman enquirer.[[1272]] In the interior of Borneo the Kenyahs generally place before the main entrance of their houses the wooden image of Balli Atap, that is, the Spirit or God (Balli) of the Roof, who protects the household from harm of all kinds.[[1273]] But it does not appear that this divine watchman is provided with more than one face.

|Thus the King of the Wood at Nemi seems to have personated the great Aryan god of the oak, Jupiter or Janus, and to have mated with the oak-goddess Diana.| To apply these conclusions to the priest of Nemi, we may suppose that as the mate of Diana he represented originally Dianus or Janus rather than Jupiter, but that the difference between these deities was of old merely superficial, going little deeper than the names, and leaving practically unaffected the essential functions of the god as a power of the sky, the thunder, and the oak. If my analysis of this great divinity is correct, the original element in his composite nature was the oak. It was fitting, therefore, that his human representative at Nemi should dwell, as we have seen reason to believe he did, in an oak grove. His title of King of the Wood clearly indicates the sylvan character of the deity whom he served; and since he could only be assailed by him who had plucked the bough of a certain tree in the grove, his own life might be said to be bound up with that of the sacred tree. Thus he not only served but embodied the great Aryan god of the oak; and as an oak-god he would mate with the oak-goddess, whether she went by the name of Egeria or Diana. Their union, however consummated, would be deemed essential to the fertility of the earth and the fecundity of man and beast. Further, as the oak-god had grown into a god of the sky, the thunder, and the rain, so his human representative would be required, like many other divine kings, to cause the clouds to gather, the thunder to peal, and the rain to descend in due season, that the fields and orchards might bear fruit and the pastures be covered with luxuriant herbage. The reputed possessor of powers so exalted must have been a very important personage; and the remains of buildings and of votive offerings which have been found on the site of the sanctuary combine with the testimony of classical writers to prove that in later times it was one of the greatest and most popular shrines in Italy. Even in the old days when the champaign country around was still parcelled out among the petty tribes who composed the Latin League, the sacred grove is known to have been an object of their common reverence and care. And just as the kings of Cambodia used to send offerings to the mystic kings of Fire and Water far in the dim depths of the tropical forest, so, we may well believe, from all sides of the broad Latian plain the eyes and footsteps of Italian pilgrims turned to the quarter where, standing sharply out against the faint blue line of the Apennines or the deeper blue of the distant sea, the Alban Mountain rose before them, the home of the mysterious priest of Nemi, the King of the Wood. There, among the green woods and beside the still waters of the lonely hills the ancient Aryan worship of the god of the oak, the thunder, and the dripping sky lingered in its early, almost Druidical form, long after a great political and intellectual revolution had shifted the capital of Latin religion from the forest to the city, from Nemi to Rome.