he hurled blazing torches in imitation of lightning. It was his impious wish to mimic the thundering car of Zeus as it rolled across the vault of heaven.[1] Near a temple of Mars, outside the walls of Rome, there was kept a certain stone known as the lapis manalis. In time of drought the stone was dragged into Rome and this was supposed to bring down rain immediately.[2] There were Etruscan wizards who made rain or discovered springs of water, it is not certain which. They were thought to bring the rain or the water out of their bellies.[3] The legendary Telchines in Rhodes are described as magicians who could change their shape and bring clouds, rain, and snow.[4]
Again, primitive man fancies he can make the sun to shine, and can hasten or stay its going down. At an eclipse the Ojebways used to think that the sun was being extinguished. So they shot fire-tipped arrows in the air, hoping thus to rekindle his expiring light.[5] Conversely during an eclipse of the moon some Indian tribes of the Orinoco used to bury lighted brands in the ground; because, said they, if the moon were to be extinguished, all fire on earth would be extinguished with her, except such as was hidden from her sight.[6] In New Caledonia when a wizard desires to make sunshine, he takes some plants and corals to the burial-ground, and makes them into a bundle, adding two locks of hair cut from a living child (his own child if
- ↑ Apollodorus, Bibl. i. 9, 7; Virgil, Aen. vi. 585 sqq.; Servius on Virgil, l.c.
- ↑ Festus, svv. aquacliciuni and manalem lapidem, pp. 2, 128, ed. Müller; Nonius Marcellus, sv. trullum, p. 637, ed. Quicherat; Servius on Virgil, Aen. iii. 175; Fulgentius, Expos, serm, antiq., sv. manales lapides, Mythogr. Lat. ed. Staveren, p. 769 sq.
- ↑ Nonius Marcellus, sv. aquilex, p. 69, ed. Quicherat. In favour of taking aquilex as rain-maker is the use of aquaclicium in the sense of rain-making. Cp. K. O. Müller, Die Etrusker, ed. W. Deecke, ii. 318 sq.
- ↑ Diodorus, v. 55.
- ↑ Peter Jones, History of the Ojebway Indians, p. 84.
- ↑ Gumilla, Histoire de l’Orénoque, iii, p. 243 sq.
