Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/147

Rh vagrant Hercules, as two sons of Neptune, while it forms a curious prelude to the history of that composite British people whose merchantmen and men-of-war now cover all the seas.

This leads me, however, in a direction contrary to the one I wish to take; for I am less interested at this point in the way in which the Celtic Zeus was split into several characters, than in the formation of an estimate of his character and attributes before the time of his transformation. As a god of the Celts in the earliest period of their existence, he was probably king of their gods, giver of wealth and increase, leader in war, and lord equally of both land and sea, if they then knew the sea. To compare Nodens or the Celtic Zeus with the Greek Zeus, one has to submit the latter to somewhat the same process of collecting his early attributes; that is to say, Nodens is not strictly to be compared with the classic Zeus, but with the pre-classic Zeus who was Zeus, Posidon and Pluto all in one; who also discharged the functions of several of his classically so-called sons, such, for example, as Ares. Greek literature usually presents Greek theology in a highly departmental state; but traces are not lacking of a previous stage. We have a well-known instance in Pluto, who was always a Zeus, that is to say a chthonian or catachthonian Zeus, with his realm in the deep earth as far below its surface as the sky is above it. This is borne out by the Orphic myth of the union with Persephone of Zeus in the form of a snake, but still as father Zeus; and by the Pontic cult which did not distinguish between and ; not to mention how near the idea of Pluto,