Romans. In Italy, too, votive and symbolic axes have been met with, dating from very early times (Fig. 14[1] ).
This is equally the case in Europe north of the Alps. In Gaul we find such symbols as early as the Stone Age. Axes with or without handles are carved on stones forming the walls and roofs of tombs of this period. The image of a man, or rather of a god, with an axe, may be seen on the wall of one of the caves that in Champagne are hewn out of the chalk-rock (Fig. 15), and from the time that Gaul was a Roman province we have many reproductions of a god holding in his hand a hammer with a long handle (Fig. 16). The hammer, symmetrical like the double-edged axe, strongly resembles the hammer of the northern Thor, but the handle is so long that it reaches the ground. In Latin the name of this Celtic god is Taranis or Tanarus. Whether this name is philologically related to Thunor, the old Teutonic form of Thor's name, is a question with which I cannot deal in this connection.[2]
The Gauls also looked upon the sun god and the god of thunder as one. This is proved by the images that have been found in Gaul of a god resting with one hand on a wheel, the symbol of the sun, and holding in the other a flash of lightning (Fig. 17).
The Slavonians figured Perun, the god of thunder, with a stone axe in his hand. A statue that Prince Wladimir put up in Kiev in the year 980 was made of wood and had a silver head and a golden beard. In honour of Perun an oak-log fire was kept burning night and day. In Greece, too, the oak was dedicated to the sun god.
The Lithuanians worshipped the same god under the name of Perkunas, and the Letts called him Perkons.
- ↑ Found in a tomb at Bologna. Cf. Montelius, La civilisation primitive en Italic, vol. i. col. 404, Fig. e. Half size.
- ↑ Cf. Stallybrass, Teutonic Mythology by Jacob Grimm, vol. i. p. 168.
