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56 the wheel, whom he identifies with the fourth god in Caesar's list, was the god of the sun; and that, the Romans having no special god of the sun till after Caesar's time, the latter could not avoid identifying him with Jupiter. This view deserves to be carefully studied, and may be expected to lead to a better understanding of the original nature of the chief god of the early Aryans, but I am inclined to doubt its applicability to Gaulish mythology so late as the time of Caesar. On the other hand, it can scarcely be denied that a Roman must have always been ready to identify with Jupiter any Gaulish god associated with the phenomenon of thunder, however symbolized.

But no one has more accurately estimated the value of such identification than M. Gaidoz: he tells us, for instance, that it would not be made under the influence of scientific comparisons; that it was not writers like Macrobius that saw it done, but Caesar, the soldiers and the Roman colonists in Gaul; that it took place as the result of reports which could do justice only to one of the attributes of the god concerned; that it may have been based even on accidental resemblances; and that, in a word, the Gaulish religion as known to us is a palimpsest, in which the new writing allows isolated words of the older hand to be read, but not much more. Later, in speaking of the whole passage devoted to the Gaulish gods by Caesar, M. Gaidoz urges the same view in words to which I could not do justice without quoting them verbatim: 'En voulant juger la mythologie gauloise d'après ce texte, je me suis dit plus d'une fois que nous étions dans la situation des sultanes d'Égypte avec les leçons de