Fetialis[1] sacrificing a pig with a flint stone, which, however, does not appear to have been sharpened. "Ubi dixit, porcum saxo silice percussit." The "religiosa silex"[2] of Claudian seems rather to have been a block of stone like that under the form of which Jupiter, Cybele, Diana, and even Venus were worshipped. Pausanias informs us that it was the custom among the Greeks to bestow divine honours on certain unshaped stones, and ΖΕΥΣ ΚΑΣΙΟΣ is thus represented on coins of Seleucia in Syria, while the Paphian Venus appears in the form of a conical stone on coins struck in Cyprus. The Syrian god from whom Elagabalus, the Roman emperor, took his name seems also to have been an unhewn stone, possibly a meteorite.
The traces, however, of the Stone Age in the religious rites of Greece and Rome are extremely slight, and this is by no means remarkable when we consider how long the use of bronze, and even of iron, had been known in those parts of Europe at the time when authentic history commences. We shall subsequently see at how early a period different implements of stone had a mysterious if not a superstitious virtue assigned to them. I need only mention as an instance that, in several beautiful gold necklaces[3] of Greek or Etruscan workmanship, the central pendant consists of a delicate flint arrow-head, elegantly set in gold, and probably worn as a charm. Nor is the religious use of stone confined to Europe.[4] In Western Africa, when the god Gimawong makes his annual visit to his temple at Labode, his worshippers kill the ox which they offer, with a stone.
To come nearer home, it is not to be expected that in this country, the earliest written history of which (if we except the slight account derived from merchants trading hither), comes from the pen of foreign conquerors, we should have any records of the Stone Age. In Cæsar's time, the tribes with which he came in contact were already acquainted with the use of iron, and were,, indeed, for the most part immigrants from Gaul, a country whose inhabitants had, by war and commerce, been long brought into close relation with the more civilized inhabitants of Italy and Greece. I have elsewhere shown[5] that the degree of civilization which must be conceded to those maritime tribes far exceeds what is accorded by popular belief. The older occupants of Britain, who
