Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/332

 284 The European Sky-God.

nymph.^ In a dedicatory inscription found at Praeneste,- a certain Caesius Taurinus speaks of his father as —

" Fortunae simulacra colens et Apollinis aras Arcanumq. lovem."

Ado}-7Jzg Fortune's form, Apollo's altars. And Jupiter of the Mysteries.

But in place of " Arcanumque lovem " various scholars have read " Aegeriumque lovem." ^ If this reading is sound, it affords an excellent parallel to ^Egeria, " the oak-goddess," since Jupiter at Praeneste was an oak-god.^

The nut-tree too, since like the oak and the beech it bore edible fruit, was connected with Jupiter in popular parlance. "Nuts," says Servius,^ "are under the protec- tion of Jupiter: wherefore also they are called iuglandes, that is Jupiter's acorns {lovis glandes)!'

It is probable that the Italians, like the Greeks,^ regarded oak-mistletoe as the quintessence of the oak, and so con- nected it with the most brilliant manifestation of the sky-god, i.e. with the sun. The sun seems to figure in Italian religion as the wheel or orb of Fortuna,'^ who

^ Plut. de fort. Rom. 9 vv/xcpui' p.lav 5pvd8wv.

2 Corp. inscrr. Lat. xiv. 2852, Biicheler Cartn. Lat. epigraph. 249.

^ E.g. S. V. Pighius Hercules Prodicius Antverpiae 1587 p. 525 pro- fesses to have copied the inscription himself from the original marble base with the reading AEGERIVMQ • lOVEM, and J. Gruter Inscrr. Rom. Corp. p. 72, 5 gives a drawing of it with the same reading. On the other hand, H. Dessau in Corp. inscrr. Lat. xiv. 2852 reads ARCANVMQ • lOVEM, and says of the inscription as a whole: "descripsit de Rossi, recognovi ipse post Mommsenum." The matter needs clearing up; which should be easy, since the base is still extant in the Barberini Gardens at Praeneste.


 * Supra p. 280 f.

^ Serv. in Verg. eel. 8. 30, cp. Cloatius Verus ap. Macrob. Sat. 3. 18. 4 luglans. . . quasi Diuglans, id est At6s ^AXavos and the context, Varr. de ling. Lat. 5. 102 haec glans optuma et maxuma ab love et glande iuglans est appellata. See further Class. Rev. xviii. 86.

^Folk-lore xv. 424 ff.

''Class. Rev. xvii. 421. M. Gaidoz, who first detected the true character of "Fortune's wheel," further pointed out that the dedication-day of the