show that one of the names under which the god received honour there, was that of Mercurius Arvernus.[1] The focus of his cult has to be sought in Auvergne, but we find from votive tablets that he was also known in Bavaria, in some districts of Rhenish Prussia, and on the banks of the Meuse in the Netherlands.[2] With these must be ranked an inscription at Bittburg, in Rhenish Prussia, to—Deo Mercur(io) Vassocaleti.[3]
But to understand the term Vassocaleti, it would be well to study carefully Gregory's words in the passage already alluded to. He, a native of Auvergne, seems to have been well acquainted with the ruins on the Puy de Dôme, and the following is his account of them: Veniens vero [Chrocus] Arvernos, delubrum illud, quod Gallica lingua Vasso Galate vocant, incendit, diruit atque subvertit. Miro enim opere factum fuit atque firmatum. Cuius paries duplex erat, ab intus enim de minuto lapide, a foris vero quadris sculptis fabricatum fuit. Habuit enim paries ille crassitudinem pedes triginta. Intrinsecus vero marmore ac museo variatum erat. Pavimentum quoque ædes marmore stratum, desuper vero plumbo tectum.[4] Now
- ↑ Rev. Celt. ii. 426, iv. 15; Rev. des Soc. savantes (1875), Vol. i. p. 249.
- ↑ Brambach, Nos. 256, 257, 593, 1741, 2029 add. p. xxvii.
- ↑ Kuhn's Beitræge zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung, iij. 169; Brambach, No. 835; Rev. Arch. (1875), Vol. xxx. pp. 367, 368, where M. Mowat corrects Brambach's Vasso·caleti into Vassocaleti. In the same article, p. 361, he gives facsimiles of the readings of the corresponding form in the chief manuscripts of Gregory's text.
- ↑ Gregorii Turonensis Opera, Historia Francorum (contained in Monumenta Germaniæ Historica), Lib. i. c. 32, where the reading preferred by the editors begins with Veniens vero Arvernus, &c., but A 1 reads Arvernos.
