The Religious Experience of the Roman People Part 19

Perhaps the first of these new deities to arrive was the famous Hercules Victor or Invictus of the _ara maxima_ in the Forum Boarium, who continued for centuries to accept the t.i.thes of the booty of generals and the profits of successful merchants. Virgil in the eighth _Aeneid_[473] makes Evander show his guest this altar and the celebration of its festival, and tell him the tale of Cacus and the oxen and the cave on the Aventine hard by; the poet, like every one else until the last few years, believed the cult to be primeval and Roman.

But one of the many gains for the history of Roman religion which have recently been secured--even since the publication of my _Roman Festivals_--is the certainty that the Italian Hercules is really the Greek Heracles acclimatised in the sister peninsula, and that the cult of the _ara maxima_, though that altar was inside the sacred boundary of the _pomoerium_, was not native in Rome.[474] It seems, however, almost certain that it did not come direct from any part of h.e.l.las, though its position, close to the Tiber and its landing-place, might naturally lead us to think so. It is almost impossible to believe that Heracles would have been allowed inside the _pomoerium_, had he been introduced by foreigners in the strict sense of the word. No doubt much has yet to be learnt about Hercules in Italy; but recent painstaking researches have made it possible for us to acquiesce in the belief that this Hercules of the _ara_ came from a Latin city,--from that Tibur which by tradition was of Greek origin--"Tibur Argeo positum colono,"--and which, like its neighbour Praeneste, was curiously receptive of foreign influence.[475]

It is believed that the Greek traders from Campania and Magna Graecia made their way northwards through Latium, and thus eventually reached Rome with the deity whom they seem to have always carried with them. He was, in the words of Dr. Carter,[476] a deity of whom, by the contagion of commerce, the Romans already felt a great need, a G.o.d of great power from whom came success in the practical undertakings of life; and it was quite natural that his shrine should be in the busy cattle-market of the city, if we remember that the wealth of the early Romans, _pecunia_ as they called it, mainly consisted in sheep and oxen. As Heracles in various forms was to be met with all over the Mediterranean coasts, it would indeed be strange if he were not found in the growing city commanding the central water-way of Italy; and his appearance there may be said to have put Rome in touch with the Mediterranean business of that day. There he was destined to remain, with all the honour of an oldest cult, though other cults of the same G.o.d came in later, and were established quite close to him; and though never a State deity of much importance, he exercised a wholesome influence in matters of trade, as the G.o.d who sanctioned your oath, and who accepted the t.i.the of your gain which you had vowed at the outset of an enterprise.[477]

In the same period, though the traditional date of their temple is later, came the Twin Brethren, Castor and Pollux, and found their way, like Hercules, into the city within the _pomoerium_. The famous temple of Castor (before whom his brother gradually gave way) was at the end of the Forum under the Palatine, close to the fountain of Juturna, where the Twins watered their horses after the battle of Lake Regillus; and there the beautiful remains of the latest reconstruction of it still stand.[478] This position alone should make us feel confident that the cult did not come direct from Greek sources; and it had its origin, perhaps, in the period when Rome was in close relation with Latin cities, which themselves had been gradually absorbing the cults and products of the Greeks of Campania. There is a strong probability that it came from Tusculum, with which the legend of the Regillus battle is closely connected, and where the cult had beyond doubt taken strong root.[479] Like the Hercules of the _ara maxima_, the Twins were no doubt brought by the course of trade, which was continually pus.h.i.+ng up from the south; for they too were favourites of the merchant adventurer, and throughout h.e.l.las were the special protectors of the seafarer. Their connection with horses is well known, and not as yet satisfactorily explained in its Roman aspect; but Dr. J. B. Carter thinks that they first became prominent in Greece when the Homeric use of chariots was abandoned for a primitive kind of cavalry, and that "the Castor-cult moved steadily northward (from Magna Graecia), carried, as it were, on horseback," and that when it reached Rome it became connected with the reorganisation of the cavalry. This seems to be almost pure guess-work, and, attractive as it is, I fear we cannot put much faith in it.[480]

The position in the Forum, and the well-known connection of both twins with oaths,[481] seem to me rather to suggest a more natural origin in trade. I would suggest that the equine character of the cult in Latium was secondary, and that the connection of the temple and cult with the Roman cavalry was a natural result, but not a primary feature, of its introduction. I should be inclined to look on it as coming in with the building of the temple, which was probably of later origin than the original introduction of the cult.

Some time after the calendar was drawn up, a deity was established on the Aventine, _i.e._ not within the _pomoerium_, whose arrival marks a development in the organisation of handicraft. We cannot indeed _prove_ that the settlement of Minerva on the Aventine took place so early, but we have strong grounds for the conclusion.[482] This temple was in historical times the religious centre of trade-gilds; and these gilds were by universal Roman tradition ascribed to Numa as founder, which simply means that they were among the oldest inst.i.tutions of the City-state. As Minerva does not appear in the calendar, had no _flamen_, and therefore must have been altogether outside the original patrician religious system, the natural inference is that the temple was founded, like the shrines of Hercules and the Twin Brethren, towards the end of the period we are dealing with, and was from the first the centre of the gilds. Of those mentioned by Plutarch in his life of Numa (ch. 17), we know that the following gilds belonged to Minerva: _tibicines_, _fabri_ (carpenters?), _fullones_, _sutores_; and it is a reasonable guess that the others, _coriarii_, _fabri aerarii_, and _aurifices_, were also under her protection. These trades, as Waltzing remarks in his great work on Roman gilds,[483] are all in keeping with the rudimentary civilisation of primitive Rome; they are those which were first carried on outside of the family. Workers in iron are not among them; bronze is still the common metal.

Now of course we must not go so far as to a.s.sume that none of these trades existed before the cult of Minerva came to Rome; but from her close a.s.sociation with them all through Roman history, and from the fact that the Romans were originally an agricultural folk, as the calendar shows, with a simple economy and simple needs, it is legitimate to connect the arrival of the G.o.ddess with the growth of town life and the demand for articles once made in rude fas.h.i.+on chiefly on the farms, and with a period of improvement in manufacture, and the use of better materials and better methods. Whence, then, did these improvements come?

This is only another way of asking the question, Whence did Minerva come?

By the common consent of investigators she came from the semi-Latin town of Falerii in southern Etruria, where these arts were practised by Etruscans, or those who had learnt of Etruscans.[484] Her name is Italian, not Etruscan;[485] she was an old Italian deity taken over by the invading Etruscans from the peoples whose land they occupied. But while in the hands of Etruscans she had adopted Greek characteristics, especially those of Athene, the patroness of arts and crafts. She soon, indeed, appeared with some of the character of Athene Polias, as we shall see at the end of this lecture; but her real importance, far down into the period of the Empire, was in the temple on the Aventine, and in connection with the crafts. The dedication day of the temple was March 19, which was known, as we learn on the best authority, also as _artific.u.m dies_.[486]

There was another famous temple on the Aventine which by universal consent is attributed to the same period as that of Minerva. Diana does not appear in the calendar, and had no _flamen_; Roman tradition ascribed her arrival to Servius Tullius, and we shall not be far wrong if we place it at or towards the end of the age of the kings.h.i.+p. The temple was celebrated as containing an ancient statue of Diana, the oldest or almost the oldest representation of a deity in human form known at Rome, which was a copy of a rude image of Artemis at Ma.s.silia, of the type of the famous [Greek: xoanon] of the Ephesian Artemis.[487]

It also contained a _lex templi_ in Greek characters, and a treaty or charter of a federation of Latin cities with Rome as their head, which was seen by Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus when in Rome in the time of Augustus.[488]

The explanation of the arrival of Diana is simple. The _dies natalis_ of the temple is the same as that of the famous shrine of the same G.o.ddess at Aricia--the Ides of August.[489] Aricia was at this time the centre of a league of cities including Tusculum and Tibur, with both of which, as we have just seen, Rome was closely connected at this time; a league which is generally supposed to have superseded that of Alba, marking some revolution in Latium consequent on the fall of Alba.[490] Diana was a wood-spirit, a tree-spirit, as Dr. Frazer has taught us, with some relation to the moon and to the life of women; of late she has become familiar to every one, not as she was known later, in the disguise of Artemis, but as the deity of that shrine--"pinguis et placabilis ara Dianae"--of which the priest was the Rex Nemorensis: he who "slew the slayer and shall himself be slain."[491] But in those days it was only the fact that she was the chief local deity of Aricia, the leading city of the new league, which brought her suddenly into notice. When the strategic position of Rome gave her in turn the lead in Latium, Diana pa.s.sed on from Aricia to the Tiber, entered on a new life, and eventually took over the attributes of Artemis, with whom she had much in common. The Diana whom we know in Roman literature is really Artemis; but Diana of the Aventine, when she first arrived there, was the wood-spirit of Aricia, and her temple was an outward sign of Rome's new position in Latium: it was built by the chiefs of the Latin cities in conjunction with Rome, and is described by Varro as "commune Latinorum Dianae templum."[492] It was appropriately placed on the only Roman hill which was then still covered with wood, and was outside the _pomoerium_.

There was one other G.o.ddess, a Latin one, who was traditionally a.s.sociated with this period, and especially with king Servius Tullius--Fortuna, or Fors Fortuna; she does not appear in the calendar, had no _flamen_, and must have been introduced from outside. But it was long before Fortuna became of any real importance in Rome, and I shall leave her out of account here. She had two homes of renown in Latium, at Antium and Praeneste, and was in each connected with a kind of oracle, which seems to have been specially resorted to by women before and after childbirth. She was also very probably a deity of other kinds of fertility; and in course of time she took on the characteristics of the Greek Tyche, and became a favourite deity of good luck.[493]

Let us pause for one moment to reflect on the character of these new deities of whom I have been speaking: Hercules, Castor, Minerva, Diana.

It must be confessed that, as compared with the great deities of the calendar, they are uninteresting; with the exception, perhaps, of Hercules, they do not seem to have any real _religious_ significance.

They are local deities brought in from outside, and have no root in the mind of the Roman people as we have so far been studying it. They seem to indicate the growth of a population in which the true old Roman religious instinct was absent; they represent commerce, business, handicraft, or politics, pursuits in which the old Roman and Latin farmers were not directly interested; they were suffered to be in Rome because the new population and the new interests must of necessity have their own wors.h.i.+ps, but they were not taken into the heart and mind of the people. So at least it seems to us, after we have been examining the development of the native religious plant from its root upwards. But we must remember that of that new population, its life and its needs, we know hardly anything, and it would not be safe to a.s.sume that the conception of Minerva had no influence on the conscience of the artisan, or that of Hercules no power of binding the trader to honest dealing and respect for his oath. As for Diana, though, as Dr. Carter says, she had been introduced "as part of a diplomatic game, not because Rome felt any religious need of her," the fact that the Latin treaty was kept in her temple has a certain moral as well as political significance which ought not to be overlooked. It is impossible to put ourselves mentally in the position of the men who brought these cults to Rome, or of the Romans who granted them admittance; but we shall be on the safe side if we imagine the former at least to have had a conviction that their dealings at Rome would not prosper unless they were carried out with the blessing of their own G.o.ds.

But we now come, in the last place, to the foundation of a cult of a very different kind from these, and of far greater import than any of them in the history of Roman religious experience. We have seen that the temple of Diana on the Aventine meant the transference of the heads.h.i.+p of the Latin league from Aricia to Rome. When Rome took over this heads.h.i.+p, and by removing its religious centre to Rome--or, perhaps more accurately, by offering Diana of Aricia a new home by the Tiber--removed also any danger of a new power growing up in Latium outside her own influence, she seems to have taken another important step in the same direction. Archaeological evidence confirms the tradition that at this time the temple of Jupiter Latiaris, the real and original G.o.d of the league, on the Alban hill, was rebuilt;[494] and as the remains of its foundation are of Etruscan workmans.h.i.+p, we may believe that the work was undertaken at that period of an Etruscan dominion in Rome which no one now seriously doubts, and which is marked by the Etruscan name Tarquinius, and by the old tradition that Servius Tullius was really an Etruscan bearing the Etruscan name Mastarna.[495] Now those in power at Rome at this time, whoever they were, not content with rebuilding the ancient temple of Jupiter on the Alban hill, conceived the idea of also building a great temple at Rome, on the steep rock overlooking the Forum, to the same deity of the heaven who had long presided over the Latin league. The tradition was that this temple was vowed by the first Tarquinius, begun by the second, and finally dedicated by the first consul Horatius in the year 509.[496] It is quite possible that this tradition indicates the truth in outline--that it was an Etruscan who conceived the idea of the great work, and that the foreign domination gave way to a Roman reaction before the temple was ready for dedication.

We cannot know what exactly was the Etruscan intention as to the cult; but we know that the temple was built in the Etruscan style, that its foundations were of Etruscan masonry,[497] and that the deities inhabiting it were three--a _trias_--a feature quite foreign to the native Roman religion.[498] Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva had each a separate dwelling (_cella_) within the walls of the temple, which, in order to meet this innovation, was almost as broad as it was long.

Whether this trias was the one originally intended by the Etruscan king or kings it is impossible to say; but I have great doubts of it. I confess that I have no ground but probability to go on when I conjecture that a long period elapsed between the beginning of this great undertaking and the final completion, and that in the meantime many things had happened of which we have no record; that when the temple was finished it was in Roman hands, though retaining its Etruscan characteristics, and especially the combination of three deities; and that those three deities were essentially Roman in conception. Roman, too, was the idea that one of the three should be paramount; the two G.o.ddesses never attained to any special significance, and the temple always remained essentially the dwelling of the great Jupiter, the Father of heaven.[499]

The cult-t.i.tles of this Jupiter, Optimus Maximus, the best and greatest, seem to raise him to a position not only far above his colleagues in the temple, but above all other Jupiters in Latium or elsewhere, and presumably above all other deities. They thus suggest a deliberate attempt to place him in a higher position than even the Jupiter Latiaris of the Mons Alba.n.u.s, whose temple had been rebuilt in the same period.

The very novelty of such cult-t.i.tles betrays both power and genius in their originator; they are wholly unlike any we have met with so far; they do not suggest a function or a locality or a connection with some other deity; they stand absolutely alone in the history of the Roman religion till far on in the Empire.[500] Here is no _numen_ needed at a particular season to bless some agricultural operation; Jupiter Optimus Maximus seems hardly to be limited by s.p.a.ce or season, and is to be always there looking down on his people from his seat on the hill which was henceforward to be called Capitolinus, because the s.p.a.ce which had been prepared there for his reception bore the name of Capitolium, the place of heads.h.i.+p.[501] These t.i.tles, Best and Greatest, call for reflection, for more thought than we are apt to give them; one wonders whether they can be as old as tradition claimed, and in fact at least one recent writer has been tempted, without sufficient reason, to date the whole foundation two centuries later than the Tarquinii.[502] To me they rather suggest the hypothesis that the break-up of the Etruscan domination in Rome was the work of a man or men inspired by a new national feeling which ascribed the revolution to the great G.o.d of the race, to whose shrine on the same hill the kings had been used to bring the spoils of their enemies[503]; and that they took advantage of the uncompleted Etruscan temple, with its huge foundations and underground _favissae_, to settle there a new Jupiter, better and greater than any other, to whom his people would be for ever grateful, and in whom they would for ever put their trust. All older a.s.sociations with cults of the Heaven-G.o.d were to be banished from the Capitolium, just as all other deities were believed to have fled from the spot, save only Terminus; the ancient priest of Jupiter, the Flamen Dialis, had no special connection with this temple and its cult, which were under the immediate charge of an _aedituus_ only.[504] Here was the centre of the public wors.h.i.+p of the State as a whole, not only of the old patrician State; and no such ancient curiosity as the Flamen Dialis, who, as I have suggested, was a survival from some older era of Latin religious history, was to be supreme there. Here the Consul of the free Republic was to offer, on entering office, the victim--the white heifer of the Alban cult--which his predecessor had vowed, and himself to bind his successor to a like sacrifice; and this he did on behalf of patrician and plebeian alike. Here the victorious general was to deposit his spoils, reaching the temple in the solemn procession of the _triumphus_, and wearing the _ornamenta_ of the deity himself; for here, contrary to all precedent in the wors.h.i.+p of Romans, there was an image of the G.o.d wrought in terra cotta and brought from Etruria.[505] It is in connection with such solemn events as these that we may find the origin of those imposing processions which for centuries were to impress the minds of the Roman people, and indeed of their enemies also, with the might and magnificence of their Empire; for apart from the triumphal processions with which we are all familiar, the scene at the entrance of new consuls on their office must have been most impressive. They were accompanied by the other magistrates, the Senate, the priests in their robes of office, and by an immense crowd of citizens. After the ceremony the Senate met _in the temple_ to transact the first religious business of the year. Here too the tribal a.s.sembly met for the purpose of enrolling the new levies before each season of war, in order that the youths who were to fight the battles of Rome might realise the presence of Rome's great protecting deity. Even in the most degenerate days of the Roman religion, though Jupiter had suffered from the ridicule of playwrights or the speculations of philosophers, an orator's appeal to the Best and Greatest looking down on the Forum from his seat above it, could not fail to move the hearers; "Ille, ille Iuppiter rest.i.tit,"

cried Cicero in the peril of the Catilinarian conspiracy, "ille Capitolium, ille haec templa, ille cunctam urbem, ille vos omnes salvos esse voluit."[506]

Nor was it only the State as represented by its officials that could and did address itself to the wors.h.i.+p of this great G.o.d. It seems probable that the new idea of a single guardian deity, with his two attendant G.o.ddesses, for which the Romans were indebted to the genius (whoever he may have been) who released them from the yoke of the Etruscan, opened the cult to the individual in a way which must have been a novelty in the religious life of the people.[507] The most memorable example of this is in the famous story told of Scipio, the conqueror of Hannibal, which is not likely to be an invention of the annalists. As Gellius records it, it stands thus: Scipio was wont to ascend to the temple just before daylight, to order the _cella Iovis_ to be opened for him, and there to remain alone for a long time, as if taking counsel with the G.o.d about the affairs of the State. The dogs, it was said, which guarded the entrance, astonished the temple-keepers by treating him always with respect, while they would attack or bark at others.[508]

The reader may remark, that during the last few minutes I have wandered quite away from the Roman religion which we have so far been trying to understand, and he will be right. I have but just touched on this great cult, which properly belongs to Rome of the Republic, in order to show how great a change must have taken place, how great a revolution must have been consummated, when this temple arose on its Etruscan substructures. We have marked two forward steps in the social and political experience of the Romans: the settlement of the family on the land and the organisation of the City-state with its calendar. Here is a third, the liberation of that State from a foreign dominion, and the development, in matters both internal and external, which subjection and liberation alike brought with them. In regard to religious experience, the first produced the ordered wors.h.i.+p of the household, which had a lasting effect on the Roman character; the second produced the _ius divinum_, the priesthoods and the ritual for the service of the various _numina_ which had consented to take up their abode in the city and its precincts. These two taken together changed doubt and anxiety into confidence, stilled the _religio_ natural to uncivilised man, and developed the machinery of magic into forms and ceremonies which were more truly religious. Now we note a third great social step forward, which brings with it a new conception and expression of the religious unity of the State; henceforward, alongside of a multiplicity of cults and of priests attached to them, we have one central wors.h.i.+p to which all free citizens may resort, and a trinity of guardian deities, of whom one, Jupiter Best and Greatest, is the one presiding genius of the whole State.

Lastly, there can hardly be a doubt that this new cult marks a more extensive communication with neighbouring peoples than the State had as yet experienced or encouraged. Etruria, Latium, and Greece, all seem to have had a hand in it. Of its relation to the Latins and Etruscans I have already spoken. It only remains for me to note the fact that it was here, in this Capitoline temple, according to unanimous tradition, that those legendary "Sibylline books" were deposited which came from a Greek source, and according to the story, from c.u.mae.[509] These mysterious books were destined to change the whole character of the religion of the Romans during the next two centuries; and this is why the dedication of the great temple is a convenient halting-place on our journey. I propose to begin the second part of my subject by examining the nature of this change, and then to pa.s.s on to others, until we have reached the end of the religious experience of the genuine Roman people.

NOTES TO LECTURE X.

[464] _Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, chapters l.-lii.: "G.o.ds as guardians of morality."

[465] Crawley, _The Tree of Life_, in a remarkable chapter on the function of religion (ch. ix.), especially p. 287 foll. "Morality," says Mr. Crawley, "is one of the results of the religious impulse." What he means here by morality is not "that elaborated by abstract thinkers," but the "morality of elemental human nature." "Elemental morality" may be a somewhat obscure term; but I think it is highly probable that Mr. Crawley is, in part at least, right in ascribing the origin of morality to the religious impulse.

[466] Crawley, _op. cit._, p. 265.

[467] Above, pp. 107-8.

[468] See the author's article in _Hibbert Journal_ for July 1907, p. 894.

[469] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 15 foll.

[470] _Ib._ p. 421: Aust, _Religion der Romer_, p. 47.

[471] I am, of course, well aware that quite recently attempts have been made to explain the _plebs_ as the original inhabitants of Latium, and the Romans as conquering invaders; _e.g._ by Prof. Ridgeway in his paper, "Who were the Romans," read to the British Academy, and by Binder in his recently published volume _Die Plebs_. The theory is a natural one, and not out of harmony with the facts as known; but it has yet to be further developed and tested, and as those who hold it are not as yet in agreement with each other, and as the evidence which alone can prove it is of a very special character, archaeological and linguistic, I have expressed myself in terms of the older view.

[472] _The Religion of Numa_, p. 30.

[473] _Aen._ viii. 184 foll.; the description of the festival is in 280 foll.; where the interesting points are the priests of the gentes appointed to look after the cult (the Pot.i.tii only are here mentioned) "pellibus in morem cincti," and the Salii "populeis evincti tempora ramis."

[474] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 219 foll.; Carter, _Religion of Numa_, p. 31 foll. The ground had been prepared for the new view by the elaborate articles in Roscher's _Mythological Lexicon_, vol. ii. pp. 2253 foll. and 2901 foll. Of late a painstaking discussion by J. G. Winter has appeared in the _University of Michigan Studies for 1910_, p. 171 foll.; he mainly confirms Wissowa's conclusions, but provisionally accepts a suggestion of mine (_R.F._ 197) that the t.i.the practice of the _ara maxima_ may possibly have been of Phoenician origin, and points out that E. Curtius made the same suggestion as long ago as 1845. On p. 269 he also dwells, very properly, I think, on the part which the Etruscans may have had in the dissemination of the myth and cult of the Greek Heracles. Wissowa, however, stoutly maintains that these are simply Greek and of commercial origin. It has been Wissowa's special and valuable function to elucidate the Greek origin of many Roman cults and legends; but I doubt if he has adequately considered the influence of other peoples, and in particular of Phoenicians and Etruscans. Certainly the Hercules question is not finally settled by his masterly a.n.a.lysis of it in _R.K._ p. 220 foll. But most of what I said in _R.F._ about the Hercules of the _ara maxima_ may now be considered obsolete; and I may add that my remarks on the supposed connection of Hercules with Genius, Dius Fidius, and Jupiter in the same work, p. 143 foll., have lost much strength since Wissowa's book appeared. Yet I am not prepared to accept the view which would deny to Hercules on Italian soil all contamination with Italian ideas; as Willamowitz-Moellendorf puts it (_Herakles_, ed. 2, vol. i. p. 25), "Die Italiker haben dem Korper, den sie ubernahmen, den Odem ihrer eigenen Seele eingeblasen: aber wie der Name ist der Gestalt des Hercules h.e.l.lenischer Import." There are points in connection with the Roman Hercules, _e.g._ the _nodus herculaneus_ of the bride's girdle, which Wissowa does not explain, and which, so far as I can see, can only be explained by a.s.suming that, as might have been expected, the Greek Hercules became to some extent entangled in the web of Italian thought.

[475] The cult was Greek in detail; _Graeco ritu_, according to Varro as quoted by Macrobius iii. 6. 17; see also references in Wissowa, _R.K._ 222, note 2.

Following R. Peter in the articles in Roscher, I a.s.sumed, in _R.F._ p. 194, that this might be a later reconstruction of an originally Italian cult; but for the present it is safer to look on the _Graecus ritus_ as primitive, and on the presence of Salii, a genuine Italian inst.i.tution, as brought from Tibur by the gens Pinaria, of which there is a trace in that city (_C.I.L._ xiv. 3541). There also Salii were engaged in the cult of Hercules Victor, to whom t.i.thes were also offered (_C.I.L._ xiv. 3541). The evidence for the theory that the cult came to Rome from Tibur is summarised by Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 220.

[476] _Op. cit._, p. 37.

[477] For the connection of the cult with trade, Wissowa, _R.K._ 225; and the story told in Macrobius iii. 6. 11, from Masurius Sabinus, of a _tibicen_ who became a merchant and had an interview with the G.o.d in a dream. For the connection with _oaths_, _R.F._ p. 138. I may say before leaving Hercules that though I accept the latest hypotheses provisionally, I am far from believing that the last word has been said on the subject.

[478] See, _e.g._, Lanciani, _Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome_, p. 271 foll. The date of the temple is 482 B.C., but it was vowed in 496 after the Regillus battle. The three columns still standing date from 7 B.C.

[479] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 217, who points out that the Dioscuri never appear in _lectisternia_ at Rome, as they do at Tusculum, which shows that the latter cult was more directly Greek than that at Rome, and that the Roman authorities admitted it as a Latin cult without the Greek details.

[480] Carter, _op. cit._ p. 38. There seemed to be difficulties in the way of his conclusion; the Dioscuri were very strong in the Peloponnese, yet the Spartans neglected the use of cavalry. At any rate the theory needs careful historical testing. See article "Dioscuri"

in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._ It would seem natural that when once the cult had been introduced by traders it might become specially attached to the cavalry, owing to the ancient connection of the Twins with horses.

[481] Ecastor and Edepol, which were oaths used especially by women, who were not allowed to swear by Hercules, Gell. xi. 6.

[482] The reasoning will be found in full in Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 203 foll., and in his article "Minerva" in the _Mythological Lexicon_. See also Carter, _Religion of Numa_, p. 45 foll. For the position of this temple and that of Diana on the Aventine, a suburb which cannot be proved to have been then within any city wall, see Carter in _Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society for 1909_, p. 136 foll.

[483] Waltzing, _etude historique sur les corporations romaines_, vol. i. pp. 63 and 199. The relation between town life and trades is stated with his usual insight by von Jhering, _Evolution of the Aryan_, p. 93 foll.

[484] See Muller-Deecke, _Etrusker_, ii. 47; Deecke, _Falisker_, p. 89 foll.

[485] Minerva or Menrva is a.s.suredly not Etruscan, though frequently found on Etruscan monuments; see Deecke, _l.c._ p. 89 foll.

[486] Fasti Praenestini in _C.I.L._ i.^2 March 19.

"Artific.u.m dies (quod Minervae) aedis in Aventino eo die est (dedicata)." This is one of those additional notes in the Fast. Praen., which are believed to have been the work of Verrius Flaccus: see _Roman Festivals_, p. 12.

[487] Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 288. We know the fact from Strabo's account of Ma.s.silia, Bk. iv.

p. 180.

[488] Dion. Hal. iv. 26. See _R.F._ p. 198.

[489] Statius, _Silvae_ iii. 1. 60. See Wissowa's article "Diana" in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._

[490] Wissowa, _l.c._ p. 332.