er rules
over the heavens, Mars directs war.... All the Gauls assert that they
are descended from Dispater, their progenitor."[53]

As will be seen in this chapter, the Gauls had many other gods than
these, while the Roman gods, by whose names Caesar calls the Celtic
divinities, probably only approximately corresponded to them in
functions. As the Greeks called by the names of their own gods those of
Egypt, Persia, and Babylonia, so the Romans identified Greek, Teutonic,
and Celtic gods with theirs. The identification was seldom complete, and
often extended only to one particular function or attribute. But, as in
Gaul, it was often part of a state policy, and there the fusion of cults
was intended to break the power of the Druids. The Gauls seem to have
adopted Roman civilisation easily, and to have acquiesced in the process
of assimilation of their divinities to those of their conquerors. Hence
we have thousands of inscriptions in which a god is called by the name
of the Roman deity to whom he was assimilated and by his own Celtic
name--Jupiter Taranis, Apollo Grannus, etc. Or sometimes to the name of
the Roman god is added a descriptive Celtic epithet or a word derived
from a Celtic place-name. Again, since Augustus reinstated the cult of
the Lares, with himself as chief Lar, the epithet Augustus was given to
all gods to whom the character of the Lares could be ascribed, e.g.
Belenos Augustus. Cults of local gods became cults of the genius of the
place, coupled with the genius of the emperor. In some cases, however,
the native name stands alone. The process was aided by art. Celtic gods
are represented after Greco-Roman or Greco-Egyptian models. Sometimes
these carry a native divine symbol, or, in a few cases, the type is
purely native, e.g. that of Cernunnos. Thus the native paganism was
largely transformed before Christianity appeared in Gaul. Many Roman
gods were worshipped as such, not only by the Romans in Gaul, but by the
Gauls, and we find there also traces of the Oriental cults affected by
the Romans.[54]

There were probably in Gaul many local gods, tribal or otherwise, of
roads and commerce, of the arts, of healing, etc., who, bearing
different names, might easily be identified with each other or with
Roman gods. Caesar's Mercury, Mars, Minerva, etc., probably include many
local Minervas, Mars, and Mercuries. There may, however, have been a few
great gods common to all Gaul, universally worshipped, besides