Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/359

 The European Sky -God. 311

was actuated by the desire to promote the worship of Vediovis, a god commonly identified with Apollo ^ and specially venerated by the gens Juha.^ But those who had seen Jupiter himself in Caesar were prepared to find the same god incarnate in his adopted son. Horace ^ speaks of Jove as thundering in heaven, of Augustus as his visible vicegerent on earth. Virgil ^ does not know whether Augustus will choose to be a land-god or a sea-god : an Egyptian poet^ makes answer " He is both " in the following extravagant effusion —

To Caesar lord of sea and lord of shore, Zeus sprung from Zeus, the Father's freeborn Son, Whom Europe and whom Asia own as king. Star of all Hellas, risejt as Saviour Zeus.

After this one does not wonder that a bronze medallion of Tiberius struck at Turiaso in Spain shows Augustus with radiated head grasping a thunderbolt as though he were Jupiter.^ A signed cornelian in the Orleans collection is described by S. Reinach'^ as "Jupiter ou Auguste en Jupiter." And a bronze from Herculaneum, now at Naples,^ represents Augustus thunderbolt in hand. Shortly before his death a statue of him was struck by lightning and the word Caesar on its base lost the initial C : pious

^ Folk-lore xv. 421 n. 300. Possibly Virgil hints at such a desire in georg. I. 36 f. nam te nee sperant Tartara regem, | nee tibi regnandi veniat tarn dira cupido.

^ Dessau 2988 an ancient altar from Bovillae inscribed Vediovei Patrei genteiles luliei. Vedi\ovei\ aara leege Albana dicata.


 * Hor. od. 3. 5. I ff. * Verg. georg. i . 24 ff.

^ Corp. inscrr. Graec. 4923 (Philae) Katcrapt irovTOfiibovTi koI amipwi' KpariofTL, I Zavl rif €k Zavos warpos 'EXei/^fpioj, | becwlna Ei)pa)7ras re Kal 'Azcl. Rovi. Coins p. 399.

^ S. Reinach Pierres gravies p. 142, pi, 129, 23.

®S. Reinach Repertoire de la statuaire i. 190, 3. Cp. infra p. 317.