Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/313

 The European Sky -God. 265

Horace ridicules the satirist M. Furius Bibaculus for his line —

" luppiter hibernas cana nive conspuit Alpes." Jove on the wintry Alps spits the white snow,^

But Horace himself in describing an inclement climate speaks of "clouds and a sorry Jupiter.'"^ Virgil in his Georgics has :

For ripe grapes you may xvell dread Jupiter."^

Again he calls a rainy atmosphere, "Jupiter wet with South winds," or "Jupiter shivering with South winds,"* and in a famous passage concerning the spring-time says :

Then the almighty Father of the sky Into the bosom of his joyous bride With fostering showers falls J'

Petronius, not unmindful of his Virgil, in a list of portents includes the following :

Sudden fell Jupiter in a shozoer of blood. ^

This in turn was imitated by Claudian, who in the course of a similar list writes :

Jupiter, threatening, flushed with a cloud of blood.''

^ Hor. sat. 2. 5. 41, with Porphyrio, Aero, and schol. Cruq. ad loc. : see Bahrens Frag. poet. Rom. p. 319. The demerit of Furius' unlucky line (which is quoted by Quint, inst. oral. 8. 6. 17) of course lies in the metaphor conspuit, not in the metonymy luppiter.

^ Hor. od. I. 22. 19 f. Cp. Stat. Theb. 10. 373 f. sic ubi nocturnum tonitru malus aethera fran^it | luppiter, absiliunt nubes.

•* Verg. georg. 2. 419, et iam maturis metuendus luppiter uvis. Serv. ad loc. interprets : aer, more suo, cuius varietas plerumque laborem decipit rusticorum.

■^ Verg. georg. I. 418, luppiter uvidus austris, Aen. 9. 670 luppiter horridus austris, cp. Serv. ad locc. luppiter : acr. I suspect that the phrase ' ' luppiter uvidus" was suggested to the poet's mind by the phrase "luppiter tivis" : see Class. Rev. xvi. 146 ff., 256 ff.

^Verg. georg. 2. 325 f.

® Petron. sat. 122 sanguineoque recens descendit luppiter imbre {v. I. igne).

'^ Claud, in Eutrop. i. 4 f. nimboque minacem | sanguineo rubuisse lovem. Claud, de bell. Get. 378 f. vel qualis in atram | sollicitus nubem maesto love cogitur aether may be a reminiscence of the passage from Horace already cited.