races have symbolised the sun as a circle or wheel, and an old Roman
god, Summanus, probably a sun-god, later assimilated to Juppiter, had as
his emblem a wheel. The Celts had the same symbolism, and used the wheel
symbol as an amulet,[78] while at the midsummer festivals blazing
wheels, symbolising the sun, were rolled down a slope. Possibly the god
carries a thunderbolt because the Celts, like other races, believed that
lightning was a spark from the sun.

Three divinities have claims to be the god whom Cæsar calls Dispater--a
god with a hammer, a crouching god called Cernunnos, and a god called
Esus or Silvanus. Possibly the native Dispater was differently envisaged
in different districts, so that these would be local forms of one god.

1. The god Taranis mentioned by Lucan is probably the Taranoos and
Taranucnos of inscriptions, sometimes equated with Juppiter.[79] These
names are connected with Celtic words for "thunder"; hence Taranis is a
thunder-god. The scholiasts on Lucan identify him now with Juppiter, now
with Dispater. This latter identification is supported by many who
regard the god with the hammer as at once Taranis and Dispater, though
it cannot be proved that the god with the hammer is Taranis. On one
inscription the hammer-god is called Sucellos; hence we may regard
Taranis as a distinct deity, a thunder-god, equated with Juppiter, and
possibly represented by the Taran of the Welsh tale of _Kulhwych_.[80]

Primitive men, whose only weapon and tool was a stone axe or hammer,
must have regarded it as a symbol of force, then of supernatural force,
hence of divinity. It is represented on remains of the Stone Age, and
the axe was a divine symbol to the Mycenæans, a hieroglyph of Neter to
the Egyptians, and a worshipful object to Polynesians and Chaldeans. The
cult of axe or hammer may have been widespread, and to the Celts, as to