have been a sacrifice rather than an assassination. Again, Tullus Hostilius, the successor of Numa, was commonly said to have been
killed by lightning, but many held that he was murdered at the instigation of Ancus Marcius, who reigned after him. Speaking of the
more or less mythical Numa, the type of the priestly king, Plutarch observes that "his fame was enhanced by the fortunes of the
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later kings. For of the five who reigned after him the last was deposed and ended his life in exile, and of the remaining four not one died a natural death; for three of them were assassinated and Tullus Hostilius was consumed by thunderbolts."
These legends of the violent ends of the Roman kings suggest that the contest by which they gained the throne may sometimes have been a mortal combat rather than a race. If that were so, the analogy which we have traced between Rome and Nemi would be still closer. At both places the sacred kings, the living representatives of the godhead, would thus be liable to suffer deposition and death at the hand of any resolute man who could prove his divine right to the holy office by the strong arm and the sharp sword. It would not be surprising if among the early Latins the claim to the kingdom should often have been settled by single combat; for down to historical times the Umbrians regularly submitted their private disputes to the ordeal of battle, and he who cut his adversary's throat was thought thereby to have proved the justice of his cause beyond the reach of cavil.
XV. The Worship of the Oak
THE WORSHIP of the oak tree or of the oak god appears to have been shared by all the branches of the Aryan stock in Europe.
Both Greeks and Italians associated the tree with their highest god, Zeus or Jupiter, the divinity of the sky, the rain, and the thunder.
Perhaps the oldest and certainly one of the most famous sanctuaries in Greece was that of Dodona, where Zeus was revered in the
oracular oak. The thunderstorms which are said to rage at Dodona more frequently than anywhere else in Europe, would render the
spot a fitting home for the god whose voice was heard alike in the rustling of the oak leaves and in the crash of thunder. Perhaps the
bronze gongs which kept up a humming in the wind round the sanctuary were meant to mimick the thunder that might so often be
heard rolling and rumbling in the coombs of the stern and barren mountains which shut in the gloomy valley. In Boeotia, as we have
seen, the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera, the oak god and the oak goddess, appears to have been celebrated with much pomp
by a religious federation of states. And on Mount Lycaeus in Arcadia the character of Zeus as god both of the oak and of the rain
comes out clearly in the rain charm practised by the priest of Zeus, who dipped an oak branch in a sacred spring. In his latter capac-
ity Zeus was the god to whom the Greeks regularly prayed for rain. Nothing could be more natural; for often, though not always, he
had his seat on the mountains where the clouds gather and the oaks grow. On the Acropolis at Athens there was an image of Earth
praying to Zeus for rain. And in time of drought the Athenians themselves prayed, "Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, on the cornland of the
Athenians and on the plains."
Again, Zeus wielded the thunder and lightning as well as the rain. At Olympia and elsewhere he was worshipped under the surname
of Thunderbolt; and at Athens there was a sacrificial hearth of Lightning Zeus on the city wall, where some priestly officials watched
for lightning over Mount Parnes at certain seasons of the year. Further, spots which had been struck by lightning were regularly
fenced in by the Greeks and consecrated to Zeus the Descender, that is, to the god who came down in the flash from heaven. Altars
were set up within these enclosures and sacrifices offered on them. Several such places are known from inscriptions to have existed
in Athens.
Thus when ancient Greek kings claimed to be descended from Zeus, and even to bear his name, we may reasonably suppose that
they also attempted to exercise his divine functions by making thunder and rain for the good of their people or the terror and confu-
sion of their foes. In this respect the legend of Salmoneus probably reflects the pretensions of a whole class of petty sovereigns who
reigned of old, each over his little canton, in the oak-clad highlands of Greece. Like their kinsmen the Irish kings, they were expected
to be a source of fertility to the land and of fecundity to the cattle; and how could they fulfil these expectations better than by acting
the part of their kinsman Zeus, the great god of the oak, the thunder, and the rain? They personified him, apparently, just as the Ital-
ian kings personified Jupiter.
In ancient Italy every oak was sacred to Jupiter, the Italian counterpart of Zeus; and on the Capitol at Rome the god was worshipped as the deity not merely of the oak, but of the rain and the thunder. Contrasting the piety of the good old times with the scepticism
of an age when nobody thought that heaven was heaven, or cared a fig for Jupiter, a Roman writer tells us that in former days noble matrons used to go with bare feet, streaming hair, and pure minds, up the long Capitoline slope, praying to Jupiter for rain. And straightway, he goes on, it rained bucketsful, then or never, and everybody returned dripping like drowned rats. "But nowadays," says he, "we are no longer religious, so the fields lie baking."
When we pass from Southern to Central Europe we still meet with the great god of the oak and the thunder among the barbarous Aryans who dwelt in the vast primaeval forests. Thus among the Celts of Gaul the Druids esteemed nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the oak on which it grew; they chose groves of oaks for the scene of their solemn service, and they performed none of their rites without oak leaves. "The Celts," says a Greek writer, "worship Zeus, and the Celtic image of Zeus is a tall oak." The
Celtic conquerors, who settled in Asia in the third century before our era, appear to have carried the worship of the oak with them to their new home; for in the heart of Asia Minor the Galatian senate met in a place which bore the pure Celtic name of Drynemetum, "the sacred oak grove" or "the temple of the oak." Indeed the very name of Druids is believed by good authorities to mean no more than "oak men."
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In the religion of the ancient Germans the veneration for sacred groves seems to have held the foremost place, and according to
Grimm the chief of their holy trees was the oak. It appears to have been especially dedicated to the god of thunder, Donar or Thu-
nar, the equivalent of the Norse Thor; for a sacred oak near Geismar, in Hesse, which Boniface cut down in the eighth century, went
among the heathen by the name of Jupiter's oak (robur Jovis), which in old German would be Donares eih, "the oak of Donar."
That the Teutonic thunder god Donar, Thunar, Thor was identified with the Italian thunder god Jupiter appears from our word
Thursday, Thunar's day, which is merely a rendering of the Latin dies Jovis. Thus among the ancient Teutons, as among the Greeks
and Italians, the god of the oak was also the god of the thunder. Moreover, he was regarded as the great fertilising power, who sent
rain and caused the earth to bear fruit; for Adam of Bremen tells us that "Thor presides in the air; he it is who rules thunder and
lightning, wind and rains, fine weather and crops." In these respects, therefore, the Teutonic thunder god again resembled his south-
ern counterparts Zeus and Jupiter.
Amongst the Slavs also the oak appears to have been the sacred tree of the thunder god Perun, the counterpart of Zeus and Jupiter. It is said that at Novgorod there used to stand an image of Perun in the likeness of a man with a thunder-stone