It is high time for us to return to the banks of the Rhine, where the two religions of Jupiter and Odin were about to meet face to face. {218}At that time the terrible prophecies of the Edda were far from being near their fulfillment; Odin had a long period of omnipotence yet before him. To the great surprise of the adversaries, the Romans, so far from showing any alarm at his approach, received him and his retinue of deities as old acquaintances. According to their unchanging policy they would see in him nothing but a Jupiter, and in fierce Thor another gallant Mars, somewhat sobered by a long residence in northern countries and excessive use of beer. The Romans looked, in fact, upon all of these Scandinavian gods and goddesses simply as upon myths of their own that came back to them once more. The poets hallowed these claims and the historians tried to justify them. According to some, Odin the Conqueror, a member of the family of Ases, had first given to some of his conquests the name of Asia (which might very well be so), and then receded before the Roman armies to cold hyperborean regions. Here he had adopted the gods of his new conquerors, hoping that they would, in return, make him victorious--which seems to me in the highest degree improbable. According to others, the poet Ovid, when Augustus had banished him to Scythia, had learnt the language of the barbarians, {219}among whom he was living, and finding them willing and eager to listen to him, had recited before them his “Metamorphoses.” This was all that was needed to induce the Scythians to make for themselves gods after the model of the Roman gods. [Illustration: 239] Tacitus, Plutarch, Strabo, and a host of the most illustrious writers never hesitated to give currency to such childish stories, ignoring entirely the date of the Scandinavian religion. As Rome, however, permitted no human sacrifices, the priests of Odin and of Teut had at first withdrawn far from the beaten track, into the depths of dark old forests. There they could live quietly, practice without restraint the religion of their forefathers, and kill their men in perfect security. At least such were their hopes. The Roman soldiers, however, who handled the woodman’s axe {220}as readily as the sword, and the spade as well as the spear, soon made big holes in these venerable forests, murdered the murderers, and overthrew their blood-stained altars. [Illustration: 240] {221}Occasionally it happened that the brave legionaries who were employed in these hazardous enterprises, did not reappear. The proconsuls, whose duty it was to keep Germany in order, would have liked to inflict severe punishment; but just then the great reaction began to set in, from the North against the South.