Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/555

Rh CHAP. VIII. the birth of the long hills which together with the troubled sea are CHAP. brought into being by Gaia. Then follows the bridal of the earth and sky, and Gaia becomes the mother of a host of children, representing either the sun under the name of Hj'perion, or the forces at work in the natural world, the thunders and lightnings, here called the round-eyed giants, and the hundred-handed monsters, one of whom, Briareos, rescues Zeus from the wiles of Here, Athene, and Poseidon. But in all this there is really not much more mythology than in the little which has to be said of the Latin Tellus or Terra, a name the meaning of which was never either lost or weakened. It belongs to a group of words, all denoting dryness and comparative bareness; and the Latin Terra is in fact the dry land. It was other- wise %vith Mars, a god who, worshipped originally as the ripener of fruits and grain, was afterwards from the accident of his name invested with the attributes of the fierce and brutal Ares of the Greeks.^ In his own character, as fostering wealth of corn and cattle, he was worshipped at Prasneste, as Herodotos would have us believe that Scythian tribes worshipped Ares, with the symbol of a sword, one of the many forms assumed by the Hindu Linga. As such, he was pre- eminently the father of all living things, Marspiter, or Maspiter, the parent of the twin-bom Romulus and Remus. As the ripener and grinder of the corn he is Pilumnus and Picumnus,^ although the process of disintegration constantly at work on mythical names con- verted these epithets into two independent deities, while another

• The root is mar, which yields the gers. Picumntts vient d'une racine/?i: name of the Maruts and many other qui veut dne/endre: on la trouve dans mythical beings. Mars, with his picus, le pic-vert qui creuse le tronc common epithet Silvanus, is the softener des arbres, pour y chercher sa nourriture of the earth and the ripener of its har- et y logerses petits." — Breal, Hercule et vests. The name occurs under the Cams, 34. forms Mamers and Mavors. Of these The Latin Jupiter Pistor is another Professor ' Miiller says, 'armar and god whose name belongs to the same Marmot; old Latin names for Mars, root with Pilumnus. Of this deity are reduplicated forms; and in the Professor Miiller says that he " was Oscan Mamers the r of the reduplicated originally the god who crushes with the syllable is lost. Mavors is more difficult thunderbolt; and the Moloe Martis to explain, for there is no instance in seem to rest on an analogous conception Latin of m in the middle of a word ofthenatureof Mars."' — Lcciures, stcond being changed to z*." — Lectures, second series, 324. It seems more probable series, 324. that Jupiter Pistor, like Mars Silvanus anciens participes presents, le dieii qui expression MoIje Martis, like the Greek broie et le dieii qui fend. Lc pilum, iJ.{oos "Aprjos, is one which might suit avant d'etre I'arme du soldat romain, si either the crushing or the softening god, celebre chez les historiens, fut le pilon The Dii Novensiles are referred by Mr. qui sert k broyer le ble. Pilum est une Isaac Taylor {Etruscan Researches, contraction de pistillum et vient de 143) to Finnic and Samojcdic roots finsere. Pila est le vase ou Ton broyait, heaven and god. They are thus, in Iris et Pilumnus, comme le dit expressement belief, the lightning gods, or the heavenly Servius {Ain. ix, 4), le dieu des boulan- lighteners.
 * " Pilumnus et Picumnus, deux or Pilumnus, was a rustic god. The