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Lecture I.


THE GAULISH PANTHEON.


PART II.




Mars (continued)


All the facts bearing on the history of the Gaulish war-god conspire to prove that he was once the supreme divinity of the Celtic race; and though it is found convenient to term him briefly the Celtic Zeus or Jupiter, it would be more correct to speak of him in terms of Roman theology as a Mars-Jupiter. But the fact of his occupying only the third position of honour in Caesar's time, is weighty evidence to the great progress in the arts of peace and their ideas of a settled mode of life which the Continental Celts had made since the time of their conquering those portions of Europe which they inhabited when they became subject to Rome. The old god associated with the sky was eclipsed by the younger gods, the Gaulish Mercury and the Gaulish Apollo, just as even before the Wicking period Týr had been cast into the cold shade by the rude glories of Woden, a younger god of a many-sided character. But there were abundant traces in Caesar's time of the past greatness of Toutates, nay as late as that of Lucan in the first century, unless I am mistaken in regarding the fact of