Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/361

 The European Sky -God. 3 1 3

as though he were himself the peer of Jupiter Capitolinus, with whom he afifected to hold constant and private inter- course. He had a famous Greek statue of Olympian Zeus brought to Italy, intending to replace its head by a head of himself.^ When the ship conveying it perished in a thunderstorm, Caligula resoh^ed to have thunder of his own. He had a bolt constructed, which could be launched by artificial means,'^ and used to brandish his toy, calling himself Jupiter and giving oracles from an elevated throne.^ He was also saluted as Jupiter Latiaris.* His downfall was predicted by various prodigies. A statue of Jupiter at Olympia, which he had meant to convey to Rome, burst into a sudden laugh and scared away the workmen : whereupon a certain Cassius came up and declared that he had been warned by a dream to sacrifice a bull to Jupiter. Caligula himself, the night before Cassius Chaerea stabbed him, " dreamed that he stood in heaven before the throne of Jupiter, and that, kicked by the toe of his right foot, he was hurled down to earth." ^ Almost the last word he spoke was when one of the conspirators asked him for his watchword and he replied "Jupiter!' '^ Other emperors may be dismissed more shortly. A cameo in the Marlborough cabinet shows Claudius as Jupiter with thunderbolt, sceptre, and eagle all complete.^ L. Junius Silanus was done to death, if we may believe Seneca,^ simply because he dubbed his sister Juno, and so presumably might be regarded as a rival of the emperor. Coins of Vespasian and Titus represent a throne with a thunderbolt upon it and so hint at the same pretensions.^

1 Suet. Calig. 22. ^ Beuilier op. cit. p. 37.

^Dio. 59. 26. *Suet. Calig. 22.

5/3. 57. «/<5. 58.

''A. Furtwangler Die antiken Gemmen ii. 302, pi. 65, 48.

^Sen. apocoloc. 8. 2. Possibly Junius Silanus recalled the origin of his own name : supra p. 303.

® Stevenson Diet. Rom. Coins p. 400.