The marriage of the King of Rome to the oak-goddess, like
the wedding of the vine-god to the Queen of Athens, must have been
intended to quicken the growth of vegetation by homoeopathic magic.
Of the two forms of the rite we can hardly doubt that the Roman was
the older, and that long before the northern invaders met with the
vine on the shores of the Mediterranean their forefathers had
married the tree-god to the tree-goddess in the vast oak forests of
Central and Northern Europe. In the England of our day the forests
have mostly disappeared, yet still on many a village green and in
many a country lane a faded image of the sacred marriage lingers in
the rustic pageantry of May Day.
XIV. The Succession to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium
IN REGARD to the Roman king, whose priestly functions were inherited
by his successor the king of the Sacred Rites, the foregoing
discussion has led us to the following conclusions. He represented
and indeed personated Jupiter, the great god of the sky, the
thunder, and the oak, and in that character made rain, thunder, and
lightning for the good of his subjects, like many more kings of the
weather in other parts of the world.
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