the Celtic Zeus, was, I take it, the greatest of them; but the hammer-god was also one of the number, and it is he that we appear to have in the fourth Gaulish god in Caesar's enumeration. But the fact of his calling him Jupiter and of the Dalmatian dedication to Jovi Taranuco belong to the misleading identifications so felicitously estimated at their proper value by M. Gaidoz. Had we more information about the Gaulish hammer-god, we should probably find him resembling Thor still more strikingly. We are told[1] of the latter that he was a less complex divinity than Woden, that he had a well-marked and individual character, that he was ever associated with Earth, whose son he was, and whose proudest distinction was to be called the mother of Thor. He figures as the friend of man; he was the husbandman's god, whose wrath and anger were ever directed against the evil powers that injure mortals: his bolt destroyed the foul thick blights that betrayed the presence of the wicked ones, and smote through the huge cloud-masses that seemed to be crushing the earth. Lastly, he was the husband of the golden-haired goddess Sif, in whom one recognizes the corn-field divinity of Ceres.
A good deal of this description of Thor would probably have applied equally well to his Gaulish counterpart, and the name or title I am inclined to identify with the latter is that of the second god in Lucan's triad. To begin with its form and pronunciation, it is to be observed that the poet's verse requires the first syllable to be considered long, while some of the manuscripts read Æsus without the aspirate, and, as there is no reason to suppose
- ↑ By Vigfusson and Powell in their Corpus Poeticum Boreale, ij. 463.
