Folia archeologica 45.

Beszédes József: Dioscuros ábrázolású sarokkő Alsóhetényből

THE LOVAS CASKE T 169 щЩвЩШШща Fig. 8. Goddess with snakes and horses form the Lovas casket 8. ábra Istennő kígyókkal és lovakkal a lovasi ládikáról represented there is the German thunder-god Thor, who is the equivalent of the Roman Heracles.

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1 Heracles on the Lovas casket (Fig. 6) has two weapons as attributes: the traditional club behind him, and a new one, a mace with globular head above it, having identical form to that of Pietroasa. The female figure, holding an apple in her left arm and stretching it towards Heracles, cannot be Victoria. As her attributes, placed behind her, are a bow and a slim hunting dog, she may be identified with a divine huntress, like an aspect of the Roman Venus or her German equivalent. The two human figures, swallowed by the serpent, may be identified as the German Dioscuri. The closest parallels to this representation are again dated to a much later period: we find two male figures encircled by a snake on the Gosforth Cross.

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2 The Dioscuri were popular among Germans generally;

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3 in the neighbourhood of Pannónia they were venerated especially by the Vandals.

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4 On the last panel of the second stripe (Fig. 8), a male figure on top of a column is represented. Its prototype coula be a picture of Heracles, showing him on top of a column with raised club in his rignt and a bow in his left hand.

55 During the copying of this prototype, the copier turned the bow into a snake, and 5

1 Sitnek 1984, 171: Hercules

, cf. Zangemeister 1895, 55; and De Vries 1957:11, 107. Thor appears on a silver plate brought into connection with Pannónia, dated before 375 A.D., see: Nagy 1994, 295. The names of the deities venerated by those Germanic tribes, which settled down in and around the Carpathian basin did not survive (but cf. note 54 below), so we can identify them only by their Old Icelandic names, known from later sources. 5

2 De Vries 1957:2, PI. 17. The Dioscuri fighting against (lie serpent, which wants to catch them: Hauch 1983, Pl. 101:2 etc. "The Dioscuri appear on the Pietroasa patera too, see: Dunäreanu-Vulpe 1967, Pl. 16.; moreover on the golden drinking horn of Gallehus dated about 400-450 A.D.: Brondsted 1963, 321-326; and on the so-called Meleager plate in the Sevso treasure, dated before 375 A.D.: Nagy 1994, 295. 5

1 Much 1926, 28-34; Much 1934, 387-388. 5

5Roardman 1988, 804, no. 1392= 1097: Apulian bell crater, 375-350 B.C.