such especially as bee round withall, are endued with this vertue, that by the meanes of them, cities may be forced, and whole navies at sea discomfited; and these (forsooth) be called[1] Betuli, whereas the long ones be named properly Cerauniæ." Pliny goes on to say, "that there is one more Ceraunia yet, but very geason[2] it is, and hard to be found, which the Parthian magicians set much store by, and they only can find it, for that it is no where to bee had than in a place which hath been shot with a thunderbolt." There is a very remarkable passage in Suetonius[3] illustrative of this belief among the Romans. After relating one prodigy, which was interpreted as significant of the accession of Galba to the purple, he records that, "shortly afterwards lightning fell in a lake in Cantabria and twelve axes were found, a by no means ambiguous omen of Empire." The twelve axes were regarded as referring to those of the twelve lictors, and were therefore portentous; but their being found where the lightning fell would seem to have been considered a natural occurrence, except so far as related to the number. It appears by no means improbable that if the lake could be now identified, some ancient pile settlement might be found to have existed on its shores.
The exact period when Sotacus, the most ancient of these authorities, wrote is not known, but he was among the earliest of Greek authors who treated of stones, and is cited by Apollonius Dyscolus, and Solinus, as well as by Pliny. We cannot be far wrong in assigning him to an age at least two thousand years before our time, and yet at that remote period the use of these stone "halberds or axeheads" had so long ceased in Greece, that when found they were regarded as of superhuman origin and invested with magical virtues. We have already seen that flint arrow-heads were mounted, probably as charms, in Etruscan necklaces, and we shall subsequently see that superstitions, almost similar to those relating to celts, have been attached to stone arrow-heads in various countries.
To return from the superstitious veneration attaching to them,, to the objects themselves. The materials[4] of which celts in Great Britain are usually formed are flint, chert, clay-slate, porphyry,
- ↑ An interesting paper on "Bætuli" by Mr. G. F. Hill, is in the Reliquary and Illustrated Archæologist, vol. ii. 1896, p. 23.
- ↑ Geason, Scarce. "Scant and geason," Harrison's "England,"—Halliwell,. Dict. of Archaic Words, s. v.
- ↑ "Nec multo post in Cantabriæ lacum fulmen decidit, repertæque sunt duodecim secures, haud ambiguum summi imperii signum," Galba, viii. c. 4.
- ↑ See Arch. Assoc. Journ., vol. iii. p. 127, and Wilde's "Cat. R. I. A.," p. 72.
