Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/324

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

276 The European Sky -God.

Jupiters. Augustine^ speaks of a Jupiter Centumpeda, "the Hundred-footed," and explains the title as denoting ability to establish things or set them on foot {stabiliendi). Rather it was a survival from the grotesque or monstrous stage of Jupiter worship. Of the triple Jupiter there is not a trace on Italian soil ; though the Sicilians, as I have argued elsewhere,^ had in their three-eyed Cyclops a real parallel to the three-eyed Zeus of Argos. One or two Janiform Jupiters exist : there is a double bust of the god in the Palazzo Spada at Rome ; ^ and a coin of Geta exhibits a double-headed Jupiter (perhaps Jupiter Quirinus ^) holding a spear in his right hand, a thunderbolt in his left.^ But such representations may be, after all, only late accommodations to the well-known type of Janus.^ In general, the Italian conception of Jupiter was singularly free from distortion or deformity.

At this point, however, it must be remembered that Janus was in all probability only the older form of Jupiter.^ Corssen^ and other philologists have proved that, from the etymological point of view, the following pairs of deities should be equated :

cTievi (Za;/) and Anhvrj. J. Dianus {Jatuis) and Diana (Jana). \ Jupiter and Jiino.

^ Aug. de civ. Dei 7. 11 dixerunt eum (jif. lovem) Victorem, Invictum, Opitulum, Inpulsorem, Statorem, Centumpedam, Supinalem, Tigillum, Almum, Ruminum et alia quae persequi longum est.

2 Class. Rev. xviii. 325 ff.

Figured in E. Braun Antiken Marviorwerkcn I Dekade Taf. 3a, lb ; cp. Overbeck Kimstinythologie Zeus p. 91 f. ^ Infra p. 281.

5 Figured, after Braun, in Class. Rev. xviii. 367, fig. 2 ; cp. Overbeck Kunstniythologie Zeus p. 92.

^ The influence of Janus on Jupiter may also be traced in the matter of epithets : the titles Patulcius and matiitinus as applied to Jupiter (De-Vit Lex. s.vv.) are cases in point. Orelli 1242 Gemino lovi 0. m. is of doubtful meaning and authenticity.

■^ Class. Rev. xviii. 367 f.

^Corssen Uber Aussprache, Vocalismus ti. Betonung d. lat. Sprache^i. 212, Beitr. z. ital. Sprachkunde p. 350 ff.