Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/351

 The European Sky -God. 303

of the sky-god might have worthy successors. The two candidates selected were L. Junius Brutus and L. Tar- quinius CoUatinus. Apart from their other qualifications, these two bore well-omened names. For Junius means "the son of Jupiter,"^ and his colleague was the son of Egerius, "the oak-man." ^ It is also noteworthy that, when Junius had fallen in battle the same year, the consul elected in his room was Sp. Lucretius Tricipitinus, whose name suggests the god of light {lux, cp. Lucetius) in his early three-headed {triceps) form. Other members of the same family succeeded him : T. Lucretius Tricipi- tinus was consul in 508 B.C. and again in 504 B.C. ; L. Lucretius Tricipitinus, in 462 B.C. ; Hostus Lucretius Tricipitinus, in 429 B.C. Further, L. Tarquinius CoUa- tinus, though he was the son of Egerius, yet bore the ill-starred name Tarquinius ; and it was, according to Livy,^ precisely on account of his name that he was forced to abdicate and go into exile. In his place the people elected P. Valerius, who bore a well-omened name, and came of a family which, as Niebuhr'* suggests, may have exercised king!}'' power over the Sabines at an early date.

Time after time during the republican era Rome witnessed a recrudescence of this desire to find a Jupiter in her popular heroes. The most remarkable case of it is perhaps that of P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major. The people were anxious to make him " perpetual consul

^ C- Pauli in Bezzenberger's Beitrdge ziir Kunde der indogermmiischen Sprachen 1899 xxv. 214 f. cites two Latin inscriptions, Au • Fabi ■ Jucnus and M • Fabius •Junius, and contends \haX Jucnus —Jovig{e)nus unA Junius =Jov{i)-nius are the same name in a complete and clipped form respectively. Cp. infra p. 313, n. 8.

2Liv. I. 57, 6, cp. I. 34. 3, I. 38. I.

^Liv. 2. 2. 3 non placere nomen, periculosum esse libertati, cp. Piso frag. 19 Peter.


 * Niebuhr Hist, of Rome i. 538.