Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/314

 266 The European Sky- God.

Valerius Flaccus and Statius, in describing a storm at sea, both speak of "wintry Jupiter " : ^ the latter also of " cloudy Jupiter."^ Martial has not only "the shower of Jove," but also "the rains and soaking Jove." ^ And, finally, in a line of Juvenal we hear of:

The vernal Jupiter hissing with pitiless hail.*

The prose writers, even in the silver age of Latin litera- ture, refrain from such venturesome expressions, though Arnobius makes the defenders of the old mythology interpret Jupiter as "the rain,"^ and Augustine men- tions that Jupiter was sometimes identified with " the sky." ^

But the conception of Jupiter as a weather-god was by no means confined to men of letters. As the Greeks had their Poseidon or " Zeus-in-the-rain-water " (vroTe/- Aa?),'^ so the Italians recognized a watery Jupiter. Tibullus says of Egypt :

The parched grass kneels not to a Rainy Jove.^

^Val. Flacc. 3. 577 ft. ceu pectora nautis | congelat hiberni vultus lovis agricolisve, | cum coit umbra minax, Stat. Theb. 3. 26 f. cum fragor hibei-ni subitus lovis, omnia mundi | claustra tonant. With the latter passage cp. Stat. Theb. 2. 153 ff. quibus ipse per imbres | fulminibus mixtos intempestumque Tonantem | has meus usque domus vestigia fecit Apollo.

^Stat. Theb. 12. 650 f. qualis Hyperboreos ubi nubibus institit axes] lupitter. Cp. ib. 8. 423 f. ut ventis nimbisque minax cum solvit habenas| luppiter.

^ Mart. 9. 18. 8 lovis imber, 7. 36. i pluvias madidumque lovem.


 * Juv. 5. 78 f. fremeret saeva cum grandine vernus | luppiter.

^ Arnob. 5. 32 itaque qui dicit : cum sua concubuit luppiter matre. . . lovem pro pluvia, pro tellure Cererem nominat. et qui rursus perhibet lascivias eum exercuisse cum filia. . . pro imbris nomine ponit lovem, in filiae significatione sementem.

®Aug. de civ. Dei 7. 16 et mundus enim totus luppiter, et solum caelum luppiter, et sola Stella luppiter habetur et dicitur.

''Folk-lore xv. 280.

4. 2. 2 wrongly ascribes the line to Ovid.
 * Tib. I. 7. 26 arida nee I'luvio supplicat herba lovi. Senec. nat. qiiaest.