VITERES.

Many altars have been found on the line dedicated to gods unknown to Rome’s Pantheon, and supposed to have a purely local celebrity. The engraving exhibits one of a numerous class.[[142]] It was discovered near Thirlwall Castle about 1757, in the course of the formation of the military road, and shortly after presented to the Society of Antiquaries. Vitres, or Viteres, or Veteres, is a god whose name is confined to the north of Britain. Hodgson remarks, that Vithris was a name of Odin, as we find in the death-song of Lodbroc—'I will approach the courts of Vithris, with the faltering voice of fear.' If Viteres and the Scandinavian Odin be identical, we are thus furnished with evidence of the early settlement of the Teutonic tribes in England. The altar given on page [395] is

also dedicated to Viteres. The occurrence of the name of this god in a plural form, as in the annexed example, which was found at Condercum, and is now at Somerset-house, has suggested the idea, that Viteres is not the proper name of a god, but that diis veteribus—the ancient gods—is the inscription intended. Most probably, however, Viteres was the name of a local deity.

LOCAL DEITIES.

The next altar is also dedicated to a local goddess; at least it is not easy to give any more satisfactory account of the Dea Hamia. The altar was found near Thirlwall castle, and belongs to the Society of Antiquaries, London.

DEÆ MATRES.

We now proceed to an important group of altars and sculptures, which, if not strictly local, are yet chiefly found in those regions of Europe which were swept by the Teutonic wave in its progress westward. They have been met with in England, the Netherlands, along the banks of the Rhine and other parts of Germany, and in France. These deities, when sculptured, are represented as triple, generally seated, clothed in long flowing drapery, and bearing in their laps baskets of fruit. A slab, of which a drawing has already been given (p. [140]), is inscribed MATRIBUS CAMPESTRIBUS, to the mothers of the plains; it probably refers to the deities in question. An altar found in the same