digamma in dialect inscriptions where it would be expected.^83 The name may
relate to a root wes‘burn’, seen in Old High German wasal‘fire’. In India
and Iran the sacred hearth-flame falls in the province of the god Fire (Agni,
A ̄tar: Chapter 6). The Greek and Roman hearth cults must have contained
elements going back to Indo-European times. But the specialized goddess was
a regional creation of south central Europe.
One of the local titles under which Dionysus was worshipped was
Eleuthereus. It does not mean ‘liberating’ (from social constraint, psycho-
logical repression, sin, etc.), it means ‘of (the town) Eleutherai’. Like other old
Greek towns that have a feminine plural form –– Athenai, Plataiai, Potniai,
and, it may be conjectured, others such as Mykenai, Kleonai, Thebai, Thes-
piai –– Eleutherai will have had its name from a local goddess or group of
goddesses. It points to an ancient goddess Eleuthera.^84 She would correspond
etymologically to the Roman couple Lı ̄ber (Pater) and Lı ̄bera. There was also
a Jupiter Lı ̄ber, matching Oscan Iúveís Lúvfreís (genitive; inscr. 5 Rix). Lı ̄ber
and Lı ̄bera, at least, had to do with agrarian and human fertility; Varro attests
phallic processions pro eventibus seminum. If the Greek Eleuthera had a
similar character, it is not surprising that she should have been replaced by
Dionysus, or that his local cult should have retained some distinctive features
that caused him to be titled after Eleuthera’s town.
Greek $λε3θερο and Latin lı ̄ber both mean ‘free’. Why should a god or
goddess or divine couple be so designated? Perhaps it is necessary to dig
deeper into the word’s past. According to current opinion it is a derivative
from the old word for ‘people’ seen in Old High German liut, Old English
le ̄od, Lithuanian liáudis, Russian люд, etc., related to a root *h 1 leud
‘increase’.^85 For a divinity concerned with increase of produce and people,
this makes good enough sense.
With Lı ̄ber–Lı ̄bera and Vesta we are clearly not dealing with Greek deities
transferred to Italy under the influence of Greek culture, like Apollo and
Bacchus. They are old established Italic gods. The parallelism with Greek
divinities is to be explained by common tradition from a time when the
ancestors of both Italics and Greeks lived in central Europe and the north
Balkans.
Another case where a male god of classical Greece has a title that may be
taken over from an earlier goddess is that of Poseidon Hippios, ‘Poseidon god
of horses’. The Pylos tablets attest a po-]ti-ni-ya i-qe-ya= Potnia Ikkeia ̄,
(^83) See Ernout–Meillet (1959), 1288; Chantraine (1968–80), 379.
(^84) Usener (1896), 233 f. Eleuthera appears in a late source as a title of Artemis in Lycia, but
this may be unconnected.
(^85) E. C. Polomé in EIEC 416 f.
- Gods and Goddesses 145