Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/354

 3o6 The European Sky -God.

by Victory. Possibly the name Manius, which constantly occurs in this ancient family, implies that its members regarded themselves as incarnations of Janus or Jupiter. The populace dubbed Marius after his victory over the Cimbrians in loi B.C. the third founder of Rome, erected statues to him wholesale, and in their private rejoicings ofifered incense and libations " to the gods and Marius." ^ He fell in with their humour, and subsequently made a point of using a cantharus for his drinking-vessel in order that he might be compared with Father Liber,^ i.e. Jupiter Liber.^ O. Caecilius Metellus Pius, when he once gained a victory over Sertorius in Spain, was proclaimed iv7perator and received with altars and sacrifices wherever he went. He accepted sumptuous entertainments, at which he sat drinking in triumphal robes, i.e. in the costume of Jupiter.* Suddenly a mechanical figure of Victory would descend from the ceiling amid the sound of rolling thunder, bring- ing a golden trophy or a crown for his " celestial head," while choruses of women and children chanted epinician hymns.^ Nor must we hastily accuse Metellus of blas- phemy : indeed he was pontifex maxijnus in 65 B.C., and retained the office till his death. It was but another example of the great man claiming to be a greater than man. Pompey in like manner was marked as a hero by his surname Magnus : but, perhaps because his family was of plebeian origin, we find him identified with Janus, not Jupiter. On a first-brass of his son Sex. Pompeius Magnus*^ occurs a laureated head of Janus with the features of Pompey the Triumvir.

It may be surmised that these sporadic examples of

^Plut. vit. Mar. 27, Sen. de ira 3. 18. I. -Val. Max. 3. 6. 6.

^Wissowa Kel. «. Kult. d. R0171. p. 105 f., 126 f. '^ Infra p. 307.

^Sallust ap. Macrob. Sat. 3. 13. 7 f., Serv. in Verg. Aen. 5. 488, Val. Max. 9. I. 5, Plut. vit. Sert. 22.

^Babelon Monti, de la Rdp. rom. ii. 351.