Note 131 — SECTION III. HISTORICAL NOTES.[111]

It was a classical dream which made Odin or Sigge (whence Sigtuna), and his followers the Æsir (minor gods), fly from Pompey in the days of Mithridates. It was a philological dream of Finn Magnússon’s which identified Bragi with Bramhá, and the ferocious and sanguinary Odin with the moral and holy Buddha, the prototype of the Christian exemplar. The casual resemblance to the Etruscan Tina has not been more fortunate. Some one well remarks that “a man born about A.D. 333, and dying seventy-eight years old (A.D. 411), would, in respect to time, perfectly represent the personage whom the Scandinavians and the Anglo-Saxons call Odin and Woden, and who are the roots of their royal dynasties.”