Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/80

64 the lordly, princely or ruling race, and supply another instance of the brag underlying names of a type already pointed out.

Now where the name Esus occurs, it stands written over a figure of the god, which has been carefully studied by a distinguished French archæologist, M. Robt. Mowat. He describes the bas-relief as representing the god clad in a short tunic, tucked round his waist so as not to impede the free action of the body. He brandishes a square, short-hafted axe, with which he is felling or lopping a tree, the lance-like form of the leaves of which show it to be a willow such as must have grown in abundance on the banks and islands of the Seine. M. Mowat classes this figure with the bronze images and bas-reliefs of the god known by his Latin name as Silvanus. Other representations make him hold in one hand a branch which he has just cut off a tree with a woodman's bill, while a great many monuments give him as his attributes a hammer and a goblet; but in some instances the goblet is absent, while in others the hammer has smaller hammers growing as it were out of it in tree-like fashion: a remarkable specimen of this kind has been discovered at Vienne. The goblet and hammer sometimes accompany dedications to Silvanus by name; but the variations are too numerous to be enumerated. One of the most remarkable is an altar at Lyons, which brings the hammer and the billhook together: it shows the god using a billhook with his right hand and supporting himself