Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/318

 270 The European Sky -God.

of a god who originally represented the bright aspect of the sky. More than one extant inscription ^ records the due burial of a " bright " or " divine lightning-flash," as though it were a thing instinct with mysterious life. Such flashes occurring by day were regarded as exhibitions of Jupiter Fulgur,^ i.e. Jupiter identified with his own flash. According to Vitruvius,^ " Hypaethral buildings will be erected under the clear sky {sitb diu) to Jupiter the Lightning (ylovi Fulguri), to Caelus, to Sol, and to Luna ; for we see the forms and efl"ects of these divinities before our eyes in the open and shining vault of heaven." One such building or precinct dedicated to Jupiter Fulgur stood in the Campus Martins at Rome.^ Jupiter is further identified with the thunderbolt in an inscription ^ found near Vienna, which reads :

lOVI. FVLGVRI • FVLMINI

To Jttpiter the Lightning and the Thunderbolt :

perhaps also in dedications*^ to Jupiter Flagius, Flazius, or Flazzus, i.e. the " Flashing " Jupiter.

A later stage of religious thought is marked by another dedication ^ from Anguillara on the Lago di Bracciano :

SACR • lOVI • TONANTI • FVLMINANTI

Sacred to Jupiter who sends the Thunder and the Thiinderbolt. —

for here the god is more plainly anthropomorphic.

^ H. Dessau inscriptiones Latinae sekctae 3054 fulgur dium (inscribed on a cofier built of stones on the Esquiline), 3055 fulgur divom conditum (found at Nimes), cp. G. Wilmanns exempla insa-iptionutii Latinarum 2734, 2735.

^Fest. p. 201 Lindemann, where with Miiller p. 229 we should read lovi Fulgtiri.

^Vitr. I. 2. 5.

••Roscher Lex. ii. 656, W. Warde Fowler The Roman Festivals p. 239.

■'Dessau 3053, cp. 3049, 3052.

^ Conway Italic Dialects i. 1 14 f. no. 108 ekas iuvilas iuvei flagiui stahint = hae iovilae lovi Flagio stent; Dessau 3852 lovi Flazzo votum. . . lovi Flazio votum. C. D. Buck Osca.n and Uinbrian Gram. p. 248 f. connects Flagius with flagro, fulgur, etc.

'' Dessau 3047.