PLATE XXXVII
The Sacred Oak of Romowe
The great centre of the cult of the ancient Prussians was at Romowe, a place of uncertain localization. Here lived the head priest, the Kriwe, and here a perpetual fire was maintained. According to the historian Simon Grunau, who wrote in the earlypart of the sixteenth century, a triad of gods— Perkúnas, Potrympus, and Patollus, deities of thunder (see pp. 293, 319, 325), rivers and springs (and hence of vegetation and good fortune), and of the underworld respectively—received adoration in this place. His conception is here reproduced (cf. his Preussische Chronik, II. v. 2). In the oak, which remained green summer and winter, and which was screened from profane gaze, were the idols of the gods, each with his emblem before him: the head of a man, a horse, and a cow before Patollus; a perpetual fire of oak before Perúnas (cf. Part III, Note 10 on the oak as his sacred tree); and a pot containing a serpent, carefully fed by the priests, before Potrympus (the cult of the household snake, probably the harmless common ringed snake of Europe, was an important part of ancient Baltic religion). In the open spaces are piles of wood for the sacred fire, and the houses of the Waidelots, or ordinary priests, surround the whole. We have, however, no evidence that the ancient Prussians possessed idols of their gods, and in many respects the statements of Grunau are open to grave doubt. After a picture in C. Hartknoch, Selectae dissertationes historicae de variis rebus Prussicis, appended to his edition of the Chronicon Prussiae of Peter of Dusburg (Frankfort and Leipzig, 1679).
