attract undue emphasis; and this state of things among them continued probably a considerable time after a more settled mode of life in a more genial climate had set the Greek mind at liberty freely to develop the many-sided character of the Hellenic god identified with the heavens, who, as the Zeus portrayed by a few masterly touches in the Odyssey, may safely be regarded as the grandest product of heathen theology.
Jupiter.
An inscription from Morestel, near La Tour-du-Pin, in the department of the Isère, reads: Iovi Baginati, Corinthus Nigidi Aeliani ex vot(o).[1] Unfortunately the epithet Baginates, which may or may not be topical, is of unknown origin; but compare the Zend bagha, 'god,' and the O. Bulgarian bogŭ, of the same meaning.[2] We are no better off in the case of our next inscription, discovered on a small altar at Vienne: Deo Sucello, Gellia Iucund(a) v(otum) s(olvit) l(ibens) m(erito).[3] The dative is likewise written Sucello[4] on a stone found at Yverdun in Switzerland. The name of the god occurs also on a silver ring found at York and inscribed with the words Deo Sucelo.[5] These inscriptions identify the god with no Roman divinity; but that has at last been
- ↑ Rev. Celt. iv. 21; Allmer, iij. 197.
- ↑ Baginates admits also of being derived from the same root as the Latin word fagus, and in that case one might compare the Dodonian Ζεὺς Φηγός or Φηγοναῖος: see Overbeck's Griechische Kunstmyfliologie, i. 4. What did the Phrygian epithet of Ζεύς Βαγαῖος mean?
- ↑ Rev. Celt. iv. 13; Allmer, ij. 454.
- ↑ Rev. Celt. iv. 14; Mommsen, Insc. Helv. No. 140.
- ↑ Hübner, Ephemeris Epigraphica, iij. 313 (No. 181); Rev, Celt. iv. 446.
