Gods of gold, silver, and many other substances have appeared in this book. From the material idols of the first recension of Togail Troí to the divine characters who presided over lost Golden Ages in Ovid and Tochmarc Étaíne to the golden ram that rescued Phrixus and Helle in the second recension of Togail Troí, the gods are multiple and multiplicitous. Just like the guests at Belshazzar's Feast, we have seen golden gods speak worldly reason, silver gods take shape through rhetorical art, bronze and iron gods relay their poetic fables and ancient traditions, and even a few risible wooden and stone deities strut upon the page. These represent just a few of the ‘dynamic processes’ through which mythological interpretatio occurred in medieval Ireland and Classical gods were reshaped. But, as any medieval Christian writer and reader knew, above them all sits one God and his gold is to be found in the heavenly city.

This book has argued that Christian salvation history played a crucial role in medieval Irish interpretations of Classical literature and that the types of mythographic interpretatio employed by medieval Irish authors reflected methods of biblical exegesis. Chapter 1 approached the workings of interpretatio in medieval Ireland as it was applied to the names and associations of Olympians, setting out the learned glossarial background to the later adaptations. Irish texts display multiple levels of interpretatio, representing Classical deities in terms of other Greco-Roman gods, as well as in Irish terms, from the earliest glossaries of the seventh century down to the Middle Irish adaptations and beyond.