Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/320

 2/2 The European Sky -God.

found an altar representing on its four sides the Dioscuri, Leda, Jupiter, and Lucifera.^

Of Jupiter as a sea-god there are but scanty traces. At Beneventum is a dedication ^ —

lOVI • TVTATORI • MARW To Jupiter who makes the Sea safe.

Claudian calls Neptune "the watery Jupiter"^ and even " our Jupiter " : ^ but it is probable that he is using hipiter merely in the sense of " a sovereign deity." Other evidence Vvill be considered later.^

Jupiter was identified with the sun by late writers ^ and inscriptions : " but there is no reason to think that this identification was old.® The " Bright " One denoted rather, for the early Romans at least,^ the whole hemisphere of daylight. Nevertheless, with the apparent motion of the

^ E. Burton- Brown Recent Excavations in the Roman Forum p. 14 f., M. F. Hoffbauer et H. Thtdenat Le Forum Romain, p. 68.

^ Dessau 3027.

^ Claud, de cotts. Mall. Theod. 282 lovis aequorei submersam fluctibus aulam.

Thetin, nee cum soror Amphitrice | nostro nupta lovi.
 * Claud, de nupt. Ho7i. et Mar. 174 ff. die talia nunquam | promeruisse

^ Infra p. 264 f. The sculptor Heniochus carved a group representing " Oceanus et luppiter" (Plin. nat. hist. 36. 33).

® Arnob. adv. nat. 3. 30, Macrob. i. 23. I ft'., lo. Lyd. de mens. p. 47, 8, 10 f.

^ E.g. Dessau 4320, cp. 4319.

^Against the solar character of Jupiter Anxurus see Preller-Jordan Rbmische Mythologie i. 26S, n. I, Wissowa Religion und Kidtiir der R'dmer p. 232 f.

^ The bronze discs or wheels {aenei orbes) dedicated by the Romans to Semo Sancus (z.e. to Dius Fidius) out of the spoils of Privernum (Liv. 8. 20. 8) were perhaps solar symbols. At Iguvium the man who swore by Jupater Sancius held a similar wheel {urfeta=orbita) in his hand (Wissowa Rel. u. Kult. d. Rom. p. 121, n. 6). Cakes called summanalia and presumably sacred to Summanus, the nightly Jupiter, were made in the shape of a wheel (Fest. p. 267 Lindemann). The wheel was also a common symbol on the coinage of ancient Italy (A. Sambon Les mommies aiitiques de Pltalie, pp. 41, 46, 58, 66, 170, etc.), though its connection with Jupiter is quite uncertain.