ules with animal victims;
and a particular tribe, the Suevi, worship Isis. Caesar says the
Germans worship the sun, and Vulcan, and the moon. Tacitus mentions
other German gods; the two statements are both true. Tacitus gives
the German gods Roman names according to a common practice of
antiquity, which has been the source of much confusion; we shall see
afterwards how the Romans identified the gods of Greece also with
those of Rome.

The equation which Tacitus gives of the German gods with Latin ones
is still in daily use in the names of the days of the week. The
Romans applied the names of the planets, which were the names of
their own gods, to the days of the week as early as the first
Christian century; and in Germany the days were called after the
German gods supposed to answer to the Roman gods in question. Half
Europe to this day calls the days of the week after the Roman, and
the other half after the German gods. We give the Latin names with
the modern French and over against them the English, in which the
names of the German gods appear more clearly than in modern German:--

Dies Solis, the Sun's day=Sunday. (The French _Dimanche_ is from
_Dominicus_, the Lord's Day.)

Dies Lunae (Lundi)=Monday or Moon's day.

Dies Martis (Mardi)=Tuesday, the day of Tiw or Ziu.

Dies Mercurii (Mercredi)=Wednesday, the day of Wodan.

Dies Jovis (Jeudi)=Thursday, the day of Thor. In German this is
_Donnerstag_, the day of Donar=Thor.

Dies Veneris (Vendredi)=Friday, the day of Freya.

Dies Saturni retains the Latin god's name in our Saturday. (The
French _Samedi_ is derived from Sabbath.)

These Teutonic names for the days of the week are common to all the
branches of Teutonic speech, and must have a high antiquity. They
tell us what gods the Germans had in early times, and to what Roman
gods these were believed to correspond; but it would be a vain
endeavour to attempt to deduce from this, or indeed from any early
information we possess on the subject, the origin and nature of these
gods. From Grimm's laborious study of the question (_German
Mythology_, vol. i.) we gather that it is a matter mainly of
speculation what it was in Wodan that led the Romans to identify him
with their Mercury. Thor, who is identified with Jupiter, was
probably a sky-god, while Tiw or Ziu (whom etymology identifies with
Zeus, not Mars) was a god of war, and Freya, like Venus, had to do
with female beauty. We come to kno