Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/370

 32 2 The European Sky-God.

distinguished himself in battle as to earn the oaken spear thereby became king- and kept his spear in the Regia as representative of the war-god. In favour of this surmise is the fact that the spear awarded for valour was called hasta piwa and had no head to it. As represented on coins of the gens Arria it draws from M. Beurlier^ the exclamation : " It is more like a sceptre than a weapon." Virgil with equal art and lore makes Silvius, the " wood- land " king, son of Ascanius lulus, the "oak-Jupiter," lean on a headless spear.-

Now in dealing with the Greeks I took occasion to illustrate Dr. Frazer's thesis that the divine king must be put to death as soon as his physical strength decays.^ The best Italian example is of course that upon which Dr. Frazer himself has laid stress, the case of the king of Nemi, who reigned as a strong man armed till a stronger than he came and slew him. But it may not be amiss to point out that there are other traces of the same custom to be detected here and there in Latin literature. In the Casina of Plautus Olympio,^ a country slave, thus accosts his master, Lysidamus :

01. Your love-intrigue means hate galore for me.

Your wife's my foe, your son's my foe, your friends

Are all my foes. Lys. What difference does that make ?

So long as you've one Jupiter here to help you,

Just snap your fingers at the smaller gods. 01. No, no, that's talk, mere talk. Why, don't you know

That human Jupiters suffer sudden death i

And, pray, if you my Jupiter should die.

And so your kingdom pass to the lesser gods.

Who'll help my back then or my head or legs ?

The country slave here treats it as a matter of common knowledge " that human Jupiters come suddenly to a bad end " {repente ut emoriajitiir Jmmani loves) and leave their

^ Daremberg-Saglio Diet. Ant. iii. 41. ^Verg. Aeii. 6. 760.

'^Folk-Lore xv. 376 ff. ^ Plaut. Cas. 328 ff.