Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/192



PART II.

me now touch on a question which ought perhaps to have been dealt with at an earlier stage: how could the Aryan Jupiter have acquired the comprehensive character which has just been ascribed, in the early stages of their history, to Nodens, together with the other Celtic gods to be identified with him, and to Zeus? It has not, so far as I know, been minutely studied from this point of view; but M. Gaidoz has devoted to the Roman Jupiter some general remarks, which are highly relevant and deserving of being given at greater length than was done in the passing reference already made to them (p. 55). According to him, the god of light and the sun became the god of the heavens by extension, and he points out certain traces of an ancient notion which ascribed the phenomenon of thunder to the sun: more correctly speaking, the lightning may have been represented as a spark from the fiery body of the sun; but the god that occasioned the lightning might also be said to cause both the thunder and the rain that usually followed: in fact,