'Origin of Mijthologij, 211 



^usssliis pecunice mercatiisque habere vim maximam 

 arbitrantur. Post hunc, Apollonem, et Martem, et Jo- 

 vem, et Minervam. De his eandem fere, quam reliquas 

 gentes, habent opinionem. Apolionem, morbos depcl- 

 .lere ; Minervam, operum atqiie artificiorum initia trans- 

 dere ; Jovem, imperium Gcelestium tenere ; Martem, bel- 

 la regere."* 



The deity they chiefly worship is Mercury ; of him 

 they have many statues or images ; they consider him 

 as the inventor of all the arts, the protector of roads and 

 journeys, and beheve him to possess a peculiar faculty of 

 acquiring property by commerce. After him they re- 

 vere Apollo, Mars, Jove, and Minerva. Concerning these 

 deities, they entertain nearly the same opinions as other 

 nations. They believe that Apollo drives away diseases ; 

 Minerva introduces the knowledge af arts and manufac- 

 tures ; Jove presides over the atmosphere or visible heav- 

 -ens ; and Mars governs the affairs of war. 



In this account of the origin of the pagan deities, I have 

 some confidence, because it is very simple and natural-; 

 because it accords with the known taste and genius of 

 ,man, whose imagination, especially in a rude unsettled 

 state of society, is disposed to personify natural objects — 

 and particularl}^, because the etymologies explain direct- 

 ly, and without any forced analogies, the principal char- 

 acters and offices. of the deities. The great source of er- 

 .ror, among writers on this subject, has been, their reli- 

 ance on the explanations or opinions of ancient author?, 

 who wrote their accounts a thousand or fifteen hundred 

 years after the origin of the deities, when the knowledge 

 of the original signification of their names was lost, and 

 when the ignorance and fancy of men had engendered in- 

 numerable fables on this subject, confounding the char- 

 acters of the gods, and disguising the simple truth with 

 a complicated and monstrous mass of fictions. 



These etymologies prove further the antiquity of the 

 Xleltic races of men ; as the names of the pagan deities 

 are mostly found in their language. It is a fact yet sus- 

 ceptible of proof, that the ancestors of the inhabitants of" 

 .tlie west of Europe were coeval \^"ith the first inhabitajite 



-* De Bel. Gal. lib. vi. xiv. 



