Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/340

 292 The European Sky-God.

of the Latins was named Aegerius or Egerius, " he of the Oak." I conceive that the Diana and Dianus, who, on Dr. Frazer's amended hypothesis, had a joint cult in an oak-grove beside the Lake of Nemi, may have been surnamed respectively Aegeria, " the oak-goddess," and Aegerius, " the oak-god " : the former epithet, split off from Diana by a process familiar to students of ancient mythology, developed into the separate personality of Aegeria or Egeria, the oak-nymph; the latter epithet, borne by the Latin dictator, marks him as the temporal representative of Janus. Nay, more ; for the man's name was also Manius, and from him arose a long line of illustrious Manii, a fact which occasioned the proverb miilti Mani Ariciae, "There is many a Manius at Aricia."^ Now an extant fragment of a Salian hymn ^ says of Janus :

"duonus cerus es oenus "

Thou alone art a good creator —

and we have it on the authority of Festus^ that in a Salian hymn the phrase Cerus viamis meant "good creator." Whether these translations are right or wrong,*

^ Fest. p. 169 Lindemann.

'^Varr. de ling. Lat. 7. 26. I follow the text of Bahrens Frag. poet. Rotn. p. 30.

2 Paul. exc. Fest. p. 91 Lindemann, cp. ib. p. loi and Fest. p. 169.

Aust in Pauly-Wissowa iii. 1994 and Wissowa in Roscher Lex. i. 867. A. Zimmermann in Bezzenberger's Beitrage zur Kunde der indogerm anise hen Sprachcn 1899 xxv. 30 f. refers the praenomen Manius, the nomen Manius, the cognomen Manianus, and many other Latin names to rndtius, "good." W. M. Lindsay The Latin language p. 183 accepts "good" as the root-meaning of a whole group of words from the parallel stems f?iano- and matii- (manus, Manes, im-manis ? mane) ; and this was the view of Varr. de ling. Lat. 6. 4 and Macrob. Sat. I. 3. 13. On the other hand, if viane "morning" is to be dissociated from this group, and if Manius means "morning-born," as several ancient authorities declare (Varr. de ling. Lat. 9. 38, Paul. exc. Fest. p. 102 Lindemann, Auct. de praenominib. 6), it was still a suitable name for a representative of Janus, who bore the title "Morning Father" {Matutinus Pater) as a god of the brightening sky (Hor. sat. 2. 6. 20 and Aero ad loc).
 * On Cerus, who appears to have been the male counterpart of Ceres, see