Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/63

Rh no one who has noticed such Celtic names as that of the Remi, which signified princes; those of the Caturiges and Catuvellauni, meaning war-kings or battle-princes; and that of the Bituriges, which actually meant Weltherrscher or lords of the world. This explanation of the origin of the modern term Teutonic is doubtless open to the objection of implying that a natural inclination to brag was not quite confined to the Celt.

Before leaving Lucan's lines about the Gaulish divinities, it is right to quote the following words used by an ancient scholiast in reference to the passage: 'The Gauls believe Hesus to be Mercury, since he is worshipped by merchants; and Taranis, the ruler of wars and the greatest of the celestial gods, him who was accustomed formerly to be appeased with human lives, but now glad of those of animals, to be Jupiter.' The scholiast was utterly wrong in the view he took of Hesus, and not much less so in identifying Taranis with the Roman Jupiter; but it was probably the result of no similar blunder on his part, that he represents the Gauls assigning to the king of their gods the superintendence of war as his special province. The chief god of the Celts before the rise of the Celtic Mercury was their god of war: how, then, was a Roman to express this in terms of Latin theology?