Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/331

 The European Sky -God. 283

it was planted by Servius TulHus, and supports this derivation by the statement that there were in the vicinity a grove of beech-trees and a chapel of the Oak-wood Lares {lucus ...facntalis et Lanini Qjierqtietulaiiiivi sacelluni). Elsewhere ^ he connects the name Fagutal with fagus, and speaks of a shrine of Jupiter Fagutalis as existing on the spot. There was also an ancient Dianium on the Fagutal.- It seems clear, therefore, that Jupiter, and perhaps Diana before him, was worshipped on the Esqui- line as a beech-wood deity.^ Similarly on a hill called Come near Tusculum there was an ancient cult of Diana in a grove of beech-trees.* And, when Numa consulted Faunus in the oak-wood already mentioned, he bound his brows twice with a wreath of beech-leaves.^

Of the poplar as a surrogate for the oak ^ there are few, if any, traces in Italian cult. Egeria, the goddess-wife of Numa, bore a name which was once spelt Aegeria,'' and should probably be connected with aiyeipog, " a poplar." ^ But alyeipog, as we have seen, originally denoted " an oak," and Egeria is described as an oak-

^ /b. 152. Cp. Plin. ncU. hist. i6. 37 silvarum certe distinguebatur \sc. Roma) insignibus, Fagutali love etiam nunc ubi lucus fageus fuit, porta Querquetulana, etc., Paul. exc. Fest. p. 65 Lindemann : Fagutal sacellum lovis, in quo fuit fagus arbor, quae lovis sacra habebatur.

2 Class. Rev. xvi. 380 n. 3.

^Kern in Pauly-Wissowa iii. 158 justly regards Jupiter Fagutalis as the Roman counterpart of the Greek Zeus ^'r]yovalo% {Folk-lore xv. 296) and compares the Aquitanian god Fagus (Dessau 4531).

^Plin. nat. hist. 16. 242.

'^Ov.fasi. 4. 656.

^ Folk-lore xv. 297 f.

^This, according to De-Vit Onomasticon ii. 694, was at one time the common spelling of the name and is still to be found here and there in Latin literature, e.g. in Val. Max. i. 2. i. AECETUE • POCOVOM on a bowl from Vulci was taken by Secchi (// musivo Antoniniano p. 47, cp. Bull, deir Inst. arch. 1843 p. 72, 127) to be an older form of Aegeria's name : but this is very doubtful, see Fabretti Gloss. Ital. p. 24 f.


 * Class. Rev. xviii. 366 n. 4.