(Soph. fr. 582), or more vaguely ‘the barbarians’ (Ar. Pax 406–11). At Rome
the cult of the Sun was regarded as native to the Sabines (Varro, De lingua
Latina 5. 68, 74; Festus p. 22. 5 L.). As Sol Indiges, he had annual festivals, and
a sacred grove at Lavinium. There was an old temple of Sol and Luna at the
Circus Maximus.
The Germans, according to Caesar (Bell. Gall. 6. 21. 2), ‘class as gods only
those whom they can see and by whose offices they evidently benefit, the Sun,
Vulcan, and the Moon’. This is clearly a very reductionist and superficial view
of German religion. However, Tacitus (Ann. 13. 55) represents the German
noble Boiocalus as invoking the Sun et cetera sidera in a rhetorical appeal, and
many centuries later the goddess Sunna makes her appearance in a little
mythological narrative in the second Merseburg spell. Snorri (Gylf. 35) says
that Sól was counted among goddesses, and she appears occasionally in per-
sonified form (Vo ̨luspá 5; Gylf. 11).
Cormac’sGlossary s.v. Indelba records that the Irish set images of the Sun
on their altars, and St Patrick (Confessio 60) speaks of Irish heathen worship
of sun and moon. This corresponds, to be sure, with a conventional Christian
notion of paganism, but in some cases there is circumstantial detail that adds
credibility to the reports. A fourteenth-century chronicler, Peter of Duisburg,
writes that the Prussians, having no knowledge of God, ‘omnem creaturam
pro deo coluerunt, scilicet solem, lunam et stellas, tonitrua, volatilia, quad-
rupedia eciam, usque ad bufonem’.^8 In the following century Jerome of
Prague encountered a Lithuanian community who worshipped the sun and
venerated a huge mallet; the priests explained that with this mallet the signs
of the Zodiac had liberated and restored to mankind the Sun, who for several
months had been held captive in a strong fortress by a most powerful king.^9
There must once have been a springtime ritual of breaking up the earth with
mallets, associated with this myth of the return of the Sun-goddess.
The Slavs too are regularly credited with sun- and moon-worship by
chroniclers and clerics. But we are not dependent only on such vague notices.
There is record of a god Dazˇbog who was identified with the Greek Helios
and called Солнце Царь, ‘Tsar Sun’ –– the neuter ‘sun’ being personified by
means of the royal title. He was the son of Svarog, who was equated with the
Greek Hephaestus; probably we should understand ‘Fire’. The Sun also
appears in Russian folklore in female persona as Матушка красное
Солнце, ‘Mother red Sun’.^10
(^8) Mannhardt (1936), 87 = Clemen (1936), 97.
(^9) Recounted by Jerome to Enea de’ Piccolomini (Pope Pius II): Mannhardt (1936), 135 =
Clemen (1936), 104.
(^10) See further von Schroeder (1914–16), ii. 39–41; Vánˇa (1992), 68–71. The identifications
with Greek deities are in glosses on Malalas’ chronicle in the twelfth-century Ipateev Annals.
- Sun and Daughter 197