Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/83

Rh because of his being, the protector of the farmer. The hammer, doubtless, symbolized thunder and lightning; and possibly the drinking-cup, goblet, vase, poculum, urceus, or whatever you may choose to call it, which has been explained variously as Tibullus' scyphus faginus, Columella's alveolus ligneus, and Vergil's sinum lactis or milk-pail, was the symbol of rain and rustic plenty. The presence of the hammer and the dog, or of the hammer and the woodman's billhook, appropriately represent the two sides of the god's character as the hammerer and the farmer's friend, while the same idea is the key to the meaning of the multiple sledge or branching hammer.

In all the images referred to, the god is said to wear a goodnatured face, and seldom to have the hammer in his right hand ready for action: so it may be inferred that he was chiefly invoked as the protector of the farmer and the friend of the woodman. Though he did not habitually brandish his dread hammer, he was still the owner and wielder of the weapon, which he could handle whenever occasion arose: this was possibly uppermost in the mind of the man who, at the end of a successful boar-hunt, dedicated a temple to Silvanus Invictus at Stanhope in the county of Durham; and possibly the application to Silvanus of the adjective Cocidius, usually reserved for the Celtic war-god, was meant to describe a god more closely resembling Thor in his more warlike moods, a Silvanus such as that described by Livy, ''Hist. Rom.'' ii. 7, driving the Sabines to flight by the terrifying voice he caused to issue from the forest of Arsia after a contest between the Romans and Tarquin. The designation Silvanus Cocidius occurs in a dedication at