Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/306

290 of the student of the early history of a great race! With regard to the altar bearing the names of Ulysses and his father Laertes, which gives the story the air of the exactness that proves too much, it is to be observed that the words of Tacitus do not compel us to suppose that his informant mentioned the name Laertes or had ever heard it: this may be of the writer's own supplying. But even granting that Tacitus's informant asserted that he had with his own eyes read the names of both Ulysses and Laertes on an altar in the Rhine-land, such a statement would not in the least surprise any one who is familiar with the startling results obtained by untrained or careless readers from ancient but intelligible inscriptions of the most commonplace kind; and it would still be evidence to the occurrence there of altars dedicated to a god who resembled Ulysses. It is considerably more difficult to understand the mention of Greek inscriptions on the confines of Germany and Raetia, as it can hardly be supposed to refer to an occasional tombstone raised over a Greek serving in the legions of Rome; while epigraphy has nothing more nearly in point to show than the inscriptions in southern Gaul composed in the Gaulish language but written in Greek letters. So it would seem as though Tacitus or his informant had to a certain extent confounded Gaulish and Greek. With regard to Woden and his Celtic counterpart, it would probably have been somewhat hard to draw a sharp line between them, as they may have been worshipped under practically identical names in the districts where Germany and Gaul were conterminous: thus the Gaulish name prevailing there may have been the one corresponding to Welsh Se or Seon, the Silchester Saegon-,