Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/363

 The Europea7i Sky -God. 315

bid for the honours of Jupiter was Diocletian. He adopted the name loviiis, which, to judge from contemporary- literature and inscriptions, was popularly applied to him as the representative of Jove.^ "He specially adored this divinity," says Duruy,- " whose name was the beginning of his own [sc. Z^zV'-cIetianus] ; he placed the figure of Jupiter upon his coins; ... he built him a temple in the palace of Salona, and made it his study to appear in public ceremonies with the calm majesty of the father of gods and men."

I need not cite further details. It must be already clear that from Julius Caesar onwards the emperors of Rome were constantly treated as Jupiter incarnate. One notice- able symbol of their godhead was the oak-wreath. Coins of the gens Julia ^ show the head of Pietas crowned with oak ; and Pietas was equivalent to Julius Caesar, as we see from a gold coin of the same gens, which portrays a veiled head of Pietas with the features of Caesar.^ Over the door of Augustus and his successors an oak-wreath was regularly suspended by decree of the Senate.^ And the general impression produced on the public by the sight of the emperor's palace may be gathered from Ovid's^ couplet :

" This is the kotise of Jupiter," quoth I, Taking my cue from yonder wreath of oak.

There was, then, much excuse for pagan Euhemerists like Ennius '' and for Christian apologists like Tertullian,^ who, viewing such practices from the vantage-ground of

^Aur. Vict, de Caesar. 39. 18, Mamertin. paneg. in Maximian. 13. 3, Eumen. /ra restaur, schol. 10. 2, Claud, de bell. Gild. 418 f., Lact. de mart, persecut. 52 ; Dessau 621, 634, 658 f., 661, 665. See farther Duruy History of Kome vi. 539, where a bronze medaUion inscribed lovio Diocletiatio Aug. is figured.

^V. Duruy loc. cit. ^Babelon Monn. de la Rep. rom. ii. 17.


 * lb. p. 16. ^ Class. Rev. xviii. 372.

«Ov. trist. 3. I. 35 f. 'Bahrens Frag. poet. Rom. p. 126 ff.

^Tert. apol. 10 etiam lovem ostendemus tarn hominem quam ex homine.