Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/360

 312 The E^iropean Sky -God.

folk concluded that he would live but C, i.e. a hundred, days longer and then become an aesar, i.e. the Etruscan term for a god.^ An eagle hovering round his head in the Campus Martius was regarded by him as an omen;^ and when his body was burnt in the same Campus an eagle was let loose from the pyre to carry his soul heaven- wards,^ and an old praetor declared on oath that he had seen the soul of Augustus rise into the sky> The great sardonyx cameo of La Sainte Chapelle shows Augustus v/ith a veil and rayed crown on his head, a sceptre in his hand, upborne by a figure in Phrygian attire, perhaps representing Ascanius lulus : enthroned below him is the emperor Tiberius, identified with Jupiter by means of the aegis spread upon his lap.^ On the yet finer cameo at Vienna known as the " gemma Augustea " Augustus with sceptre, eagle, etc., is enthroned as Jupiter, while a female figure, probably Oecumene, the " World," holds an oak- wreath above his head.^ Augustus' wife Livia, who long survived him, is called on Greek coins " the goddess Livia" or "Livia Juno"; "^ and Prudentius^ speaks of Juno the wife of Jupiter and Livia as " the two Junos." But, since Juno was sister as well as wife of Jupiter, the author of the tragedy Octavia ^ addresses his heroine as " second Juno, sister and spouse of Augustus."

Caligula translated the poetic fiction into fact, committed incest with his sisters, and called himself Jupiter on the strength of it.^*^ He assumed the title Optimus Maximus,

iSuet. Aug. 97. '^Id. ib.

^ Dio 56. 42. Cp. Folk-lo7-c xv. 389 ff. ^ Suet. Aug. 100, Dio 56. 46.

^ Furtwiingler Ant, Gefnni. ii. 269, pi. 60. ^ Id. ib. ii. 257, pi. 56. 5" Stevenson Diet. Rom. Coins p. 247 Q E A . A I B I A or A I B I A N . H P A N ^Prudent. Syminach. i. 292 f. duarum | lunonum.

^[Sen.] Octav. 224 ff. tu quoque terris altera luno | soror Augusti | con- iunxque graves vince dolores.

^"Aur. Vict, de Caesar. 3. 9, epit. 3. 4 f., Dio 59. 26.