of evil that attacked the crops; and it may here be mentioned, in anticipation of the remarks to be made on Irish mythology later in these lectures, that it represents the corn-field as the chosen battle-ground where the powers favourable to man make war on those other powers that would blight his crops and blast the fruits of his labour. Possibly one would not be far wrong in supposing Artio to have been the companion divinity of Esus, and Taranis one of her names. The goddess Artio has already been noticed as bearing a name kindred with the epithet Artaius of an Allobrogic Mercury (p. 5), and of the same origin as the English Earth, the Teutonic divinity whom Tacitus, in the Germania, cap. xl, calls Mammun Eartham, 'Terram Matrem.' But the name Artio refers especially to ploughing, and the bas-relief accompanying the inscription on the statue at Berne represents the goddess standing robed and holding a patera in her right hand and fruit in the left, while close by stand an oak and an altar loaded with fruits.[1]
Minerva.
Caesar, in his too brief list of the divinities worshipped by the Gauls, gives the last place to Minerva, to whom he states that they ascribed the initiation of the various trades and arts. What Gaulish goddess he had in view it is impossible to say, and the land of the Allobroges seems to yield no inscription identifying any Gaulish divinity with the Roman Minerva. But one found at Saint Bertrand de Cominges, in the Haute Garonne, mentions a temple of
- ↑ Mommsen, Inscr. Helv. No. 215, where the inscription is read: Deae Artioni Licinia Sabinilla.
