been a Celtic wolf totem-god of the dead.[107] The Roman god was also associated with the wolf.  This might be regarded as one out of many examples of a mere superficial assimilation of Roman and Celtic divinities, but in this case they still kept certain symbols of the native Dispater—­the cup and hammer.  Of course, since the latter was also a god of fertility, there was here another link with Silvanus, a god of woods and vegetation.  The cult of the god was widespread—­in Spain, S. Gaul, the Rhine provinces, Cisalpine Gaul, Central Europe and Britain.  But one inscription gives the name Selvanos, and it is not impossible that there was a native god Selvanus.  If so, his name may have been derived from selva, “possession,” Irish sealbh, “possession,” “cattle,” and he may have been a chthonian god of riches, which in primitive communities consisted of cattle.[108] Domestic animals, in Celtic mythology, were believed to have come from the god’s land.  Selvanus would thus be easily identified with Silvanus, a god of flocks.

Thus the Celtic Dispater had various names and forms in different regions, and could be assimilated to different foreign gods.  Since Earth and Under-earth are so nearly connected, this divinity may once have been an Earth-god, and as such perhaps took the place of an earlier Earth-mother, who now became his consort or his mother.  On a monument from Salzbach, Dispater is accompanied by a goddess called Aeracura, holding a basket of fruit, and on another monument from Ober-Seebach, the companion of Dispater holds a cornucopia.  In the latter instance Dispater holds a hammer and cup, and the goddess may be Aeracura.  Aeracura is also associated with Dispater in several inscriptions.[109] It is not yet certain that she is a Celtic goddess, but her presence with this evidently Celtic god is almost sufficient proof of the fact.  She may thus represent the old Earth-goddess, whose place the native Dispater gradually usurped.

Lucan mentions a god Esus, who is represented on a Paris altar as a woodman cutting down a tree, the branches of which are carried round to the next side of the altar, on which is represented a bull with three cranes—­Tarvos Trigaranos.  The same figure, unnamed, occurs on another altar at Treves, but in this case the bull’s head appears in the branches, and on them sit the birds.  M. Reinach applies one formula to the subjects of these altars—­“The divine Woodman hews the Tree of the Bull with Three Cranes."[110] The whole represents some myth unknown to us, but M. D’Arbois finds in it some allusion to events in the Cuchulainn saga.  To this we shall return.[111] Bull and tree are perhaps both divine, and if the animal, like the images of the divine bull, is three-horned, then the three cranes (garanus, “crane”) may be a rebus for three-horned (trikeras), or more probably three-headed (trikarenos).[112] In this case woodman, tree, and bull might all be representatives of a god of vegetation.  In early