Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/325

 The European Sky -God. 277

All these are ultimately connected with the root div-, which meant "to shine." ^ Several titles of Janus recall those of Jupiter. Thus the oldest hymns of the Salii saluted him as " deorum deus,"^ and he was often invoked as lanus pater or lanuspater? Conversely Jupiter was actually surnamed Janus ; for an inscription from Aquileia records a dedication lovi Diano} Again, according to one version Janus, not Jupiter, was the mate of Juturna ;^ and the title Janus Junonius implies a similar relation to Juno.*" On certain occasions joint offerings were made to Janus and Jupiter, or to Janus and Juno, or to Janus and Jupiter and Juno.'^ Janus alone took precedence of Jupiter in the divine hierarchy;^ and the rex sacrorum or priestly king at Rome, who seems to have been in a sense his special ministrant, took similar precedence of the fiavien Dialis or priest of Jupiter.^ These facts

^ Supra p. 260. Corssen loc. cit. wrongly derived the group from the root div- of divider e, divisio. Its connexion with dius, dium, "the shining sky," was already grasped by Buttmann Mythologns ii. 72, Schwegler Rdmische Geschichte i. 218 f., Preller Rdmische Mythologie'^ i. 168. Indeed, P. Nigidius Figulus, a Pythagorean of the first century B.C., long since declared that Janus was a sun-god and Diana (Jana) his partner (Macrob. Sat. i. 9. 8), while the opinion that he was a sky-god of some sort was very general in antiquity (see Roscher Lex. ii. 44).

^ Macrob. Sat. i. 9. 14, 16. Varro de ling. Lat. 7. 27 quotes a Salian line in which the phrase " divom deo " occurs. He has also {ib. 26) preserved five lines of a Salian hymn which, if we could be sure of the reading oZeu (Lindsay Latin Language p. 5), would prove that the Salii identified Janus with Zeus. Proclus certainly did so at a later date: hymn. 6. 3, 15 Xatp' "lai'e irp6iraT0p, Tied dcpdire, x^-V i'Tare 7i€u.

3 C/ass. Rev. xviii. 368 nn. 3, 4. •* Corp. inscrr. Lat. v. 7S3,

^Arnob. adv. nat. 3. 29.

^Macrob. Sat. 1.9. 15 f., i. 15. 19, lo. Lyd. dc mens. p. di, 13 Wunsch, Serv. in Verg. Aen. 7. 610.

■^ Class. Rev. xviii. 368 nn. 7, 8, 9. Cp. Plaut. cist. 519 f.

^Cic. de nat. deor. 2. 67, Arnob. adv. nat. 3. 29, Macrob. Sat. i. 9. 9. For examples see Liv. 8. 9. 6, Cat. de re rust. 134, 141, Dessau 5047 f.

^ Preller-Jordan i. 64, Wissowa Rel. u. Kult. d. Rom. p. 20, Roscher Lex ii. 43. See also Diet. Ant. s.v. " Agonalia."