Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/330

 282 The European Sky -God.

partner of Janus, was likewise an oak-goddess. One of her most famous cults was that on Mount Tifata near Capua ; and tifata meant " oak-groves." ^ Another was on the oak-clad Mount Algidus ; ^ a propos of which it should be observed that, when in 458 B.C. Roman envoys were sent to complain of a treaty broken by the Aequians, they were bidden to make their complaint to a huge oak- tree on Mount Algidus, under the shade of whose branches the Aequian commander had his quarters.^ The chief temple of Diana at Rome was on the Aventine,'^ whose slopes were covered in early days with the oak-wood of Picus and Faunus.^ A " very great and venerable sanctuary of Diana " was on the Caeliolus,^ which formed part of the Mons Ouerquetulanus.'^ Lastly, a relief in the Palazzo Colonna^ shows a statue of Diana standing beside an old but fruitful oak.

Substitutes for the oak are sometimes found in the cults of Italy, as in those of Greece.^ It is well known that the Greek word ^>;yo9, " oak," appears in Latin as fagns, " beech." ^^ The beech was in fact a religious as well as a verbal equivalent of the oak. Varro ^^ in his account of the Esquiline mentions the view that the hill derived its name from the oak-trees {aesaili) with which

^ Paul. exc. Fest. p. 156 Lindemann : Tifata iliceta.

- Hor. od. I. 21. 6, cartn. saec. 69, cp. od. 3. 23. 9 f.

3 Liv. 3. 25. 4 Liv. I. 45, alib.

^ Ov. fast. 3. 295. ^ Cic. de har. resp. 32.

^ Tac. ann. 4. 65.

370 fig. 3 I have reproduced it after C. Botticher Der Baumkultus der Hellenen fig, 26.
 * Th. Schreiber Die kelleiiistischen Reliefbilder pi. 15. In Class. Rev. xviii.

8 Folk-lore xv. 296 ff.

i" On the fact and its significance see O. Schrader Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples p. 272 f., Reallexikon p. 116 f., Frazer The Golden Bough"^ iii. 347, n. i.

" Varr. de ling. Lat. 5. 49, where the words alii ah atsculetis are a cj. of C. O. Miiller approved by Bunsen.