Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/357

 The E2iropean Sky -God. 309

side he was related to Venus and "immortal gods."^ Twenty years later, after the victory of Pharsalus, the senate decreed that Caesar's chariot should be set up on the Capitol opposite to that of Jupiter, and that a statue of him standing upon a globe should bear the inscription — " He is a demigod " {rifxiBeo^).- Caesar at first disapproved of these flatteries, and even had the obnoxious word effaced.^ But not long afterwards an ivory statue of him, and subsequently a complete chariot, was carried in procession along with the statues of the gods, while another statue of him inscribed deo invicto (Oew aviiaiTw) was set up in the temple of Ouirinus, and a third on the Capitol beside the old kings of Rome.* Soon he was actually worshipped under the title of Jupiter Julius and provided with M. Antonius as his priest {flanien Dialis)^ — a most singular instance of history repeating itself; for we have seen that the Julii of yore were human Jupiters. Caesar was, as a later tragedian ^ puts it, "become the peer of Jove." The honours decreed to him were recorded in letters of gold on tablets of silver and deposited beneath the feet of Jupiter Capitolinus." How far he believed in them himself, it is hard to say. When Antonius saluted him as King and placed a laurelled diadem on his head, Caesar replied that Jupiter alone was king of Rome and sent the diadem to the Capitol : ^ but this may have been a matter of policy. After his assassination, the people v.'ere with difificulty restrained from cremating his body in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus,^ while the authorities conferred upon him the title of diviis}^ for which the less accurate but more

^Suet. Caes. 6. '^ Dio 43. 14. •^ lb. 43. 21.

•* lb. 43. 45. 5 lb. 44. 6, cp. Cic. Phil. 2. i lO.

®[Sen.] Oct. 500 f. gentium domitor, lovi | aequatus.

'Dio 44. 7.

'^ lb. 44. II, Suet. Caes. 79, Plut. vit. Caes. 61, a/ib.

^ Suet. Caes. 84, App. de bell. civ. 2. 148. ^"Dessau 73, 730, nlib.