Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/355

 The European Sky -God. 307

would-be Jupiters could be indefinitely multiplied, if we possessed more information with regard to the early history of the Italian gentes. For instance, the gens luventia of Tusculum, loventia ^ or luentia '^ as it was sometimes spelt, — must have traced its descent from a Jupiter.^ Moreover, in Campania a whole series of Iiivilas or heraldic columns has been found, one of them expressly dedicated to Jupiter Flagius and many others erected within a precinct of Juno Lucina.* These columns, marked with the armorial bearings of this or that family, represent — if I am right in my conjecture^ — the ancestor of the family in his character as a human Jupiter. However that may be, it is certain that the Roman who so dis- tinguished himself in war as to deserve the honour of a triumph acted for the time being the part of Jupiter Capitolinus. " The general," says Mr. G. Mc. Neile Rushforth,*" " appeared in the procession in the character of the god. His dress was the same, and it was the property of the temple, and brought thence for the occasion. So, too, the golden crown [of oak-leaves] and the sceptre with its eagle belonged to the god ; the body of the general was, in early times at least, painted red like that of the image in the temple ; and the white chariot horses used by the emperors, and earlier by Camillus, recalled the white steeds of Jupiter and the Sun." Another crown of oak-leaves and acorns was the corona civica given to the man who had slain an enemy and rescued a fellow-citizen from him. It was originally of holm-oak {ilex), but later of evergreen-oak {aesculus) — that being the tree specially sacred to Jupiter — or of

"^ Bull, epigraph. 1884 p. 112 loventia Victoria.

2 G. Wilmanns Exempla inscriptiotmrn Latinaruni 30, 2820 c, alib.

3 See C. Pauli in Bezzenberger's Beitrdge 1899 xxv. 214.


 * Conway Italic Dialects i. loi ff. ^ Class. Rev. xviii. 375.

^ In Smith-Way te-Marindin Diet. Ant. ii. S94, where references for each statement are given.