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" In these respects, therefore, the Teutonic
thunder god again resembled his southern counterparts Zeus and
Jupiter.
Amongst the Slavs also the oak appears to have been the sacred tree
of the thunder god Perun, the counterpart of Zeus and Jupiter. It is
said that at Novgorod there used to stand an image of Perun in the
likeness of a man with a thunder-stone in his hand. A fire of oak
wood burned day and night in his honour; and if ever it went out the
attendants paid for their negligence with their lives. Perun seems,
like Zeus and Jupiter, to have been the chief god of his people; for
Procopius tells us that the Slavs "believe that one god, the maker
of lightning, is alone lord of all things, and they sacrifice to him
oxen and every victim."
The chief deity of the Lithuanians was Perkunas or Perkuns, the god
of thunder and lightning, whose resemblance to Zeus and Jupiter has
often been pointed out. Oaks were sacred to him, and when they were
cut down by the Christian missionaries, the people loudly complained
that their sylvan deities were destroyed.


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