Carians was equipped with a battle-axe and clad in the complete armour of a hoplite,[1] which calls to mind the Zeus of the Gauls, their Mars-Jupiter, as one might venture to term him (p. 48). It is needless to say that the Roman Mars was in no sense a mere counterpart of the Greek Ares, but rather a sort of duplicate of Jupiter, owing his existence alongside of the greater god to the composite character of the ancient Roman community. Mars shared with Jupiter the title of father, and such epithets as Loucetius or bright, while the chief honours of a successful campaign belonged to Jupiter alone: the spolia opima were his, and Mars came only second. But to step again on Greek ground, the pre-classic Zeus, with whom one should compare the Nodens of the earliest Celtic period, may be described in almost the same terms which were used of the latter: he was sovereign of gods and men, the giver of wealth and prosperity, the supreme arbiter of the fortunes of war, and lord both of land and sea. By what steps the Zeus of the Celts came to be especially associated with the sea by some of their number, will appear more clearly in a later portion of this lecture.
Cormac, Conaire, Conchobar.
Though Nuada under his various names has detained us long, he is by no means the only representative in Irish literature of the Mars-Jupiter of the Celts. As one of the most remarkable personages of this origin, may be mentioned Cormac mac Airt, grandson of Conn the Hundred-fighter: he is regarded as having reigned at Tara in the third century, and his story may contain some
- ↑ Preller's Gr. Myth. i. 111-12.
