Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/579

Rh 547 mouth; in other words, the darkness of the storm-cloud is pierced CHAP. by the Hghtning. Then follows the death of the monster, to whose • '-^ ' carcase the poet applies an epithet which links this myth with the legend of the Chimaira slain by Bellerophon and thus connects it again with that of Vritra.^

But we have here to meet the difficulty noticed by Niebuhr. Sancus or Whatever is to be said of the name Cacus, it is clear that the name Hercules cannot have been contained in the original Latin story. There was indeed a Latin god Herculus, but, like the Lares wor- shipped by the Arval Brotherhood, he was strictly a god of the country and the guardian of fences and landmarks. He is known as the Rustic, Domestic, or Genial Hercules, a name which points to an old verb hercere, herciscere, akin to arcere, and the Greek cipyciv ; but this very fact precludes the idea that the Latin Hercules, of which the old form Herclus, Herculus, survives in the exclamation Mehercule, Mehercle, is identical with the Greek Herakles.^ But the god who overcame Cacus must have had the characteristics of the Greek Herakles and the Vedic Indra; and hence when the Roman became acquainted with the Greek hero, whose name so closely resembled that of one amongst his own ancient gods, he attributed to his own Hercules the deeds which were rightly told of the son of Alkmene, and doubtless also of the god into whose place he was thus intruded. The god thus displaced was, in M. Breal's judgment, the deity known as Sancus or Recaranus. The former, answering to Zeus Pistios of the Greek and the Dius Fidius of the Latins, imparted to the Ara Maxima the peculiar sanction which rendered all oaths there taken inviolable.^ The name Recaranus, which is actually

^>i. viii. 267. lui a pas peimis de creer des etrcs ^ In this case the name, as IM. Breal intermediaires entre les dieux et les remarks, should begin with s, as in the hommes. Sans doute, il connalt des chanf^e of the aspirated Greek numeral genies d'un ordre plus ou moins releve, into the Latin sex, septem, of fwouai qui president aux actions humaines et into secjuor, &c.—//t-n-N/e et Cams, 52. interviennent dans la vie ; il sacrifie aux M. Breal further remarks (and great IManes de ses ancetres qui aprcs leur stress must be laid upon his words) mort ont pris place parmi les dieux ; that Herakles, like Perseus, Theseus, mais des demi dieux comme Thesee, Achilleus, and the rest, is in the Greek Persee, Heracles, tenant a la fois du mythology strictly not a god. Though ciel et de la terre, on n'en voit pas dans the son of Zeus himself, he is doomed to la mythologie Latine. La transforma- toil, weariness, and death ; and the only tion de Romulus en dieu Quirinus est oflset to his short career on earth is the une tentative tardive et mal reussie, que assurance that when his journey here is Rome ne renouvela pas, jusqu'au temps done he shall enter the halls of Olympos, oil elle fit de Cesar mort un demidieu." there to live in everlasting youth. l!ut — P. 51.
 * " VillosasetisPectorasemiferi." — a la fois net et abstrait du Remain ne

it is most doubtful whether the Latin ' Breal, Hercule et Cacus, 57. The mythology knew anything of heroes in name Semo with which that of Sancus the Greek sense of the word. " L'esprit is so often connected is an epithet denot-