the sky, the divinity with whom the Gauls continued to connect the wind, and to whom a Latin inscription gives the name of Mars Vintius. But the god here in question was associated probably not so much with the sky as with the earth; and hence it is that some of his attributes are common to him and the divinity of the earth par excellence, the Gaulish Pluto: so much so, in fact, that M. A. de Barthélemy[1] has tried to prove that the god likened by others to Silvanus should be recognized as the Gaulish Dis Pater of whom Caesar speaks. Somewhat the same opinion has since then been advocated by another distinguished French archæologist, M. Flouest.[2] He takes a view which seems to me to be more in harmony with the rapid advance made by Gaulish archæology within recent years in his country, namely, that the identifications suggested by the other writers mentioned are, from the nature of Gaulish theology, in a great measure compatible with one another.
Lucan's Esus is not to be disposed of without noticing his Taranis. Some of the manuscripts read Taranus, and the same form might be inferred from Taranucus and Taranucnus already mentioned; but the existence of Taranus has recently been placed beyond doubt by the discovery in the south of France of a Gaulish inscription[3]
- ↑ Rev. Celt. i. 1—8.
- ↑ Rev. Arch. v. (1885), 7—30.
- ↑ I owe my information to the kindness of Dr. Stokes, who states that the inscription I allude to in the text was discovered at Orgon, in the Bouches du Rhône. The Brythonic word for thunder is taran, masculine in Breton and feminine in Welsh. This taran does not correspond declensionally to Taranis, but it may either to taranus of the U declension, or else to forms of the declension, such as taranos (masc.) or taranon (neut.), with which the Goidelic ones agree, namely, Irish torunn, 'thunder;' Sc. Gaelic torrunn, the same. These last languages had also toirn, or tairn, of a different declension, of which more
