ation 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 Mycenaeans, 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
many other peoples, it was a divine symbol. Thus it does not necessarily
denote a thunderbolt, but rather power and might, and possibly, as the
tool which shaped things, creative might. The Celts made _ex voto_
hammers of lead, or used axe-heads as amulets, or figured them on altars
and coins, and they also placed the hammer in the hand of a god.[81]

The god with the hammer is a gracious bearded figure, clad in Gaulish
dress, and he carries also a cup. His plastic type is derived from that
of the Alexandrian Serapis, ruler of the underworld, and that of
Hades-Pluto.[82] His emblems, especially that of the hammer, are also
those of the Pluto of the Etruscans, with whom the Celts had been in
contact.[83] He is thus a Celtic Dispater, an underworld god, possibly
at one time an Earth-god and certainly a god of fertility, and ancestor
of the Celtic folk. In some cases, like Serapis, he carries a _modius_
on his head, and this, like the cup, is an emblem of chthonian gods, and
a symbol of the fertility of the soil. The god being benevolent, his
hammer, like the tool with which man forms so many things, could only be
a symbol of creative force.[84] As an ancestor of the Celts, the god is
naturally represented in Celtic dress. In one bas-relief he is called
Sucellos, and has a consort, Nantosvelta.[85] Various meanings have been
assigned to "Sucellos," but it probably denotes the god's power of
striking with the hammer. M. D'Arbois hence regards him as a god of
blight and death, like Balor.[86] But though this Celtic Dispater was a
god of the dead who lived on in the underworld, he was not necessarily a
destructive god. The underworld