the ancient capital of the Allobroges, identifies Jupiter with his thunder and lightning, since it reads: Iovi Fulguri Fulmini.[1] Still more important is one found at Chester many years ago, and now preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford: it begins with a dedication, I(ovi) O(ptimo) M(aximo) Tanaro.[2] The Vienne inscription may perhaps be of Celtic origin, but I doubt the Celticity of the other: it should rather be regarded as a monument of the piety of a German in the army at Chester in the year 154, to which it belongs. To begin with, there can be no grave doubt as to the identity, roughly speaking, of Tanaro with the English word thunder, for the Anglo-Saxon thunor, gen. thunres, German donner (for an older donar), and the name of the Norse god Thor, nom. Thórr, gen. Thórs, from a stem thonr-. To have identified the god with his thunder cannot have been greatly at variance with the habits of thought ascribed to the Germans of an earlier time, at any rate if one were to be guided by Caesar's statement, vi. 21, as to their positivism: Deorum numero eos solos ducunt, quos cemunt et quorum aperte opibus juvantur, Solem et Vulcanum et Lunam. In any case, the evidence of the name Thor may be relied on.
- ↑ Allmer, ij. p. 426; Rev. Celt. iv. 21, v. 383, where it is given as I. O. M. Fulguri, &c.
- ↑ Hübner, No. 168. Since writing the above I have found that M. Gaidoz, Études de Myth. gaul. p. 97, suggests the same idea as I do as to the nationality of the inscription: I have again examined the stone, and I am obliged to admit that the reading of the god's name is doubtful; but one thing is certain, namely, that it was never Tarano, as some will have it: that is out of the question. The alternative reading which the present state of the stone would suggest would be something like Innaro with nn conjoint.
