TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

334 CONDITION OF GODS.
gods, 1 and where he finds a twofold nomenclature, he ascribes the
older, nobler, more euphonious (TO Kpel-rrov, evfywvov, Trpoyevecr-
repov ovofjio) to the gods, the later and meaner (TO e\arrov, f^era-
yevea-Tepov)
to men. But the four or five instances in Homer are
even less instructive than the more numerous ones of the Norse
lay. Evidently the opinion was firmly held, that the gods, though
of one and the same race with mortals, so far surpassed living men
in age and dignity, that they still made use of words which had
latterly died out or suffered change. As the line of a king s
ancestors was traced up to a divine stock, so the language of gods
was held to be of the same kind as that of men, but right feeling
would assign to the former such words as had gradually disappeared
among men. The Alvismal, as we have seen, goes farther, and
reserves particular words for yet other beings beside the gods ;
what I maintained on p. 218 about the impossibility of denying the
Vanir a Teutonic origin, is confirmed by our present inquiry.
That
any other nation, beside Greeks and Teutons, believed in a separate
language of gods, is unknown to me, and the agreement of these
two is the more significant. When Ovid in Met. 11, 640 says :
Hunc Icelon superi, mortale Phobetora vulgus nominat, this is
imitated from the Greeks, as the very names show (see Suppl.).
The Indians trace nothing but their alphabet (devanagari, deva-
writing), as our forefathers did the mystery of runes (p. 149), to a
divine origin, and the use of the symbol may be connected with
that of the sound itself ; with the earliest signs, why should not
the purest and oldest expressions too be attributed to gods ?
Homer s eirea Trrepoevra (winged words) belong to heroes and other
men as well as to gods, else we might interpret them strictly of the
ease and nimbleness with which the gods wield the gift of speech.
Beside language, the gods have customs in common with men.
They love song and play, take delight in hunting, war and banquets,
and the goddesses in ploughing, weaving, spinning ; both of them
keep servants and messengers. Zeus causes all the other gods to be
summoned to the assembly II.
(dyop;, 8, 2. 20, 4), just as the Ases
1 iy p.ov(TOTpa(pr)s <al ray Trapa deols tViorarat Ae eiy, oiSe TTJV TWV 6e)v
8id\KTOv, olSe TO. TU>V 6ewv (ov6p,aTa), as VTTO p.ovcrwv Karanvfap-fvos. 6i\cov 6
irotrjTrjs 6eZat on fJiovaoXrjTrTOS eVrtv, ov p.6vov TO, TU>V dvdpwTT&v ovo^ara lirayye
XXerai etSeVat, dXX* Sxnrfp KOI ol 6eoi Xtyovtrt,