Vedic poets of thirty-three, or in one passage 3,339. Boards of twelve make
sporadic appearances in various cultures, but they look like products of
secondary systematization, not continuations of any ancestral tradition.^8
What is more likely to be ancient, at least Graeco-Aryan, is the practice of
invoking ‘all the gods’, without there being a definite notion of all their
individual identities. Some forty Vedic hymns are addressed to ‘all the gods’,
vís ́ve deva ̄ ́h
̇
, and this phrase occurs frequently in the text. Zarathushtra (Y. 32.
3) uses the etymologically corresponding phrase dae ̄va ̄ vı ̄spåŋho ̄, though in a
less ingratiating way: for him the Daevas are demons unworthy of worship,
and he is telling them that they are all born of Evil Thought. In Homer, again,
‘all the gods’ or ‘all the immortals’ is a common formula. Dedications to ‘all
the gods’ are documented from Mycenaean times on, and they are often cited
as witnesses to oaths and treaties.^9
Sometimes, instead of ‘(all) the gods’, one major deity is picked out and the
rest are attached as a collectivity, so that we get the formula ‘X and the other
gods’. Zarathushtra twice uses the expression Mazdåsca ̄ ahuråŋho ̄, ‘Mazda ̄
and Lords’, that is, all the others (Y. 30. 9, 31. 4). In the Younger Avestan hymn
to Mithra we find a similar coupling, with Mithra appended in addition: Yt.
- 139 ‘neither Ahura Mazda ̄ nor the other Bounteous Immortals nor Mithra
of the broad pastures’. Darius in the great Behistun inscription declares (DB
iv. 60) Auramazda ̄-maiy upasta ̄m abara uta ̄ aniya ̄ha baga ̄ha tyaiy hatiy,
‘Ahuramazda brought me aid, and the other gods that exist’. The early Greek
poets often refer to ‘Zeus and the other immortals’.^10 In Livy (24. 38. 8) we
find an invocation in the form uos, Ceres mater ac Proserpina, precor, ceteri
superi infernique di.
Upper and lower godsThe *deiwo ̄ ́s, as we have seen, were originally and by etymology the celestial
ones. When the gods are spoken of in a general way, they tend to be located in
(^8) The Hittites recognized ‘twelve gods of the crossroads’: Gurney (1977), 23, 41. Hesiod
lists twelve Titans, and ‘the Twelve (Olympian) Gods’ had a cult at Olympia and other places
(O. Weinreich in Roscher, vi. 764–848; D. Wachsmuth in Der Kleine Pauly, v. 1567–9), but they
were never central to Greek religious thought. They have their counterparts in the twelve Di
Consentes at Rome. Snorri (Gylf. 14, 20, 55) speaks of twelve ruler gods under Odin; cf. Gering–
Sijmons (1927–31), i. 390 f.; A. Faulkes, Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning
(Oxford 1982), 62 f.; Lorenz (1984), 213. Jocelin of Furness in his Life of St. Patrick (6. 50
p. 552D) gives a similar picture of the great oracular god Keancroithi, caput omnium deorum,
encircled by twelve deiculi aerei (Zwicker (1934–6), 161 f., cf. 213).
(^9) KN Fp 1 + 31. 7 et al. pa-si-te-oi (=πα ́ νσι θεο4hι); Usener (1896), 344 f.; Durante (1976),
- Sometimes, as mentioned in the last chapter, it is expanded to ‘all gods and all goddesses’.
(^10) Hes. Th. 624, Op. 725, fr. 75. 19 f.; Il. 2. 49, 3. 298, 308, etc.
122 3. Gods and Goddesses