Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 2,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (thunder and lightning): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1925)

The Celtic Janiform god 325

Noricum, the Ianus Pate?-1, Ianus Augustus2, Ianus Pater Augustus*
of Dalmatia, the Ianus Vaeosus4, of Gallia
Narbonensis. Indeed, the memory of this
dicephalous deity lingered on through the
middle ages into modern times. Geoffrey
of Monmouth, who died in 11 54 A.D., de- FiS- 2I4-

scribes the burial of King Lear by his daughter Cordelia in the
following terms5:

' But Cordeilla, now mistress of the helm of state, buried her father in a certain
underground chamber, which he had bidden to be made beneath the river Sora
within the town of Legecestria. Now this underground chamber had been
founded in honour of the two-faced Janus. And here, when the day of celebra-
tion came round, all the workmen of the town used to begin the work that would
occupy them throughout the year.'

Geoffrey professes to be translating literally from a very ancient
manuscript in the Welsh tongue lent to him by Walter, archdeacon
of Oxford6. And it must be admitted7 that the extant chronicle in
Old Welsh attributed to Tysilio, bishop of Wales (s. vii A.D.)8, agrees
closely with Geoffrey's account :

1 Corp. inscr. Lat. iii no. 2881 (Corinium (K~arin)) Iano Pat[ri] | etc., no. 3030
(Flanona (Pianona)) Iano | Patri.

2 Corp. inscr. Lat. iii no. 2969 = Dessau Inscr. Lat. set. no. 3321 (Aenona (Nona))
Iano Aug. | etc.

3 Corp. inscr. Lat. iii no. 3158= Dessau Inscr. Lat. set. no. 3320 (brought from
Salonae (Sa/ona) (?) to Padua, and now at Este) Iano Patri | Aug. etc.

4 Corp. inscr. Lat. xii no. 1065 (Cadenet near Iulia Apta [Apt)) Iano Vaeojso etc.

5 Galfredus Monumetensis hist. reg. Brit. 2. 14 Cordeilla vero regni gubernaculum
adepta sepelivit patrem in quodam subterraneo, quod sub Sora fluvio intra Legecestriam
fieri praeceperat (praecepit ed. Ascensii). erat autem subterraneum illud conditum in
honorem bifrbntis Jani. ibi omnes operarii urbis adveniente solemnitate diei (I should
prefer to read dei) opera, quae per annum acturi erant, incipiebant.

6 Galfredus Monumetensis hist. reg. Brit. r. 1, cp. ir. 1, 12. 20. For a discussion of
these passages see San-Marte's ed. pp. xiii—xx ('Gottfrieds Quellen').

7 W. M. Flinders Petrie ' Neglected British History ' in Proceedings of the British
Academy 1917 viii argues that the Brut Tysilio is really the original from which Geoffrey
was drawing. See further an important critique of this paper in The Cambridge Reviezu
1918 xxxix. 363 f. by [Dr] M. R. J[ames].

8 The text is printed by W. Owen The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales London 1801
ii. 81—390. I give the translation by P. Roberts The Chronicle of the Kings of Britain
London 1811 p. 44 f. Id. id. p. 354 well compares the description given by Giraldus
Cambrensis itin. Cambr. 1.1 (p. 349 of Sir R. C. Hoare's trans, in Bell's reprint 1905)
of the festival of St. Almedha as celebrated on Aug. 1, Lammas Day (one of the four
cross-quarter days—Roodmas, Lammas, Martinmas, Candlemas: see infra p. 326 n. 4),
near Aberhodni: ' You may see men or girls, now in the church, now in the churchyard,
now in the dance, which is led round the churchyard with a song, on a sudden falling on
the ground as in a trance, then jumping up as in a frenzy, and representing with their
hands and feet, before the people, whatever work they have unlawfully done on feast
days; you may see one man put his hand to the plough, and another, as it were, goad
on the oxen, mitigating their sense of labour, by the usual rude song: one man imitating