Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/348

 300 The European Sky-God.

several indications that the king was deemed an embodi- ment of Janus or Jupiter. In the first place, Janus is said to have reigned as a king on the Janiculum/ which probably implies that the local king personated Janus and bore his name. A very ancient hymn of the Salii ^ saluted Janus as "first and foremost of divine kings." And just as lulus, the human Jupiter of Alba Longa, founded the gens Julia, so the human Janus of the Janiculum may have founded the gens Diania and the gens Dianidia mentioned in Roman inscriptions.^

Now, a double Janus would be represented better by two kings than by one. It is, therefore, I venture to think, highly significant that there was a marked and persistent tendency towards a dual kingship both at Rome and elsewhere in Italy. My suggestion is that the two kings, twins if possible, were regarded as the most fitting embodiment of the two-fold sky-god.^ Procas, king of Alba, left his kingdom to his two sons Amulius and Numitor on condition that they should take it in turns to reign for a year^ — a rule that recalls on the one hand the alternate life of the Dioscuri,^ on the other the alternate office of the consuls. Romulus and Remus on coins of Rome,^ like the Dioscuri on coins of Greece,

1 Arnob. adv. 7iat. 3. 29, Macrob. Sat. i. 7. 19, Seiv. in Verg. Aen. 8. 319.

"^ Ap. Varr. de ling. Lat. 7. 26. I follow the text of Bahrens Fragmenta poetariim Romanorufn p. 30 : promelios devom recum.

^De-Vit Onomasticon ii. 612.

of Tilo — that is, the sky — on a woman who has given birth to twins, and the infants themselves are called the children of the sky " ( The Golden Bough"^ i. 91).
 * Dr. Frazer has told us that the Baronga of S.E. Africa ''bestow the name

^[Aur. Vict.] de vir. illustr. i. i, cp. Strab. 229.

^Roscher Lex. i. 1155 f. 'Id. iii. 482.

^ S. W. Stevenson Diet, of Rom. Coins p. 914.

3 Roscher Zex. i. 1171 f., Ii76f., ii. 2535. Their connection with Juturna at Rome is noteworthy (M. Albert Le culte de Castor et Pollux en Italie p. 35 ff., cp. supra p. 271 f.).