cannot but be regarded as practically identical with it: compare such names as Cassivellaunos, which meant the king or ruler of the hanse or league, and Catuvellauni, of the same import as Caturiges; both peoples being wont, as it would seem, to boast themselves lords of battle or war-kings. It is after the analogy of such compounds that the Gaulish element in the Hières inscription is to be read; that is to say, it makes one compound epithet, Magniaco-vellaunos,[1] meaning, as it may provisionally be rendered, king or ruler of Magniacon or Magniacum, in allusion to some place with which the god's name was associated.
Besides the two foregoing inscriptions in honour of a distinctly Gaulish Mercury, there is monumental evidence that there were temples dedicated to the god at no less than twenty-six different spots[2] in the country of the Allobroges. Some of the twenty-six very possibly belonged to the Greco-Roman Mercury of an imported cult;
- ↑ The Gauls, like the modern Celts, had no objection to compound terms, and they even used foreign elements in such place-names as Augustonemetum, the grove of Augustus; Caesarodunum, Caesar's fortress; and Juliomagus, the field of Julius. Some of their personal names were quite as long: witness Conconnetodumnos, Veriugodumnos and Vercassivellaunos. These and the like must have seemed cumbrous to the Romans; and Englishmen of the present day profess to be amused with German compound terms, forgetting that they are usually the shortest way of expressing what is meant, and that few languages form compounds more readily or complicately than their own, though the longer terms are never written as single words: take, for example, such instances as 'university examinations,' 'university examination-papers,' 'London, Chatham and Dover Railway,' or 'London, Chatham and Dover Railway Company.' It is only an accident—doubtless an inseparable accident of perversity—that English grammarians usually conceal the fact of the composition.
- ↑ See them enumerated by M. Vallentin in the Rev. Celt. iv. 15.
