Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/71

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I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON.
55

compensated for by the discovery of a stone at Mainz reading: I(ovi) o(ptimo) m(aximo) Sucaelo, &c.[1] In spite of the variations in the spelling, the same divinity is probably meant in all these instances, and he is identified by the Mainz monument with Jupiter.

It is needless to add that these data do not enable us to guess in what respect Baginates and the other god were supposed to resemble the Roman Jupiter; nor is it by any means clear how Caesar fixed on the fourth god in his list, the fourth in the order of importance and popularity from the Gaulish point of view, as the one to be placed over against Jupiter. It has sometimes been supposed that the thunderbolt must have been the decisive attribute; but M. Gaidoz[2] reasoning from the monuments combats that view, and rightly points out that Caesar confined himself to the words, Iovem imperium caelestium tenere, which tell us nothing direct about the thunderbolt. M. Gaidoz, who has written at great length on the Gaulish God of the Sun and the Symbolism of the Wheel, regards Jupiter originally as the god of light par excellence, and as having become by an expansion of his attributes the god of the sky or the heavens. He entertains the same idea of the Gaulish god represented with a wheel in his hand, while he regards the thunderbolt as a Roman accessory, the Gaulish symbol for thunder being undoubtedly the hammer, as among the Teutons.[3] His conclusions, then, are that the wheel represents the sun; that the Gaulish god with

  1. Gaidoz, Études, p. 105; Jahrbücher des Vereins von Alterthumsfreunden im Rheinlande (1882), lxxiv. p. 189; Bull. épigr. de la Gaule, iij. (1883), p. 154; iv. (1884), p. 200.
  2. Études, p. 96.
  3. Ib. pp. 93, 96.