The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic An...

1052. de Feriis, &c., p. xi. To me this explanation does not seem quite satisfactory, though it seems to be sanctioned by Mommsen (C. I. L. i. 2. 332, note on Id. Oct. sub fin.). It is however undoubtedly preferable to the view I had taken before reading Wissowa’s tract, that the omission was due to an aristocratic neglect of usages which only survived among the common people and had ceased to concern the whole community.

1053. Polyb. xii. 4b.

1054. Ἐν ἡμέρᾳ τινὶ κατακοντίζειν ἵππον πολεμιστὴν πρὸ τῆς πόλεως ἐν τῷ κάμπῳ καλουμένῳ. This is quoted from “τὰ περὶ Πυρρόν.”

1055. Fest. 178 ‘October equus appellatur, qui in campo Martio mense Oct. immolatur quotannis Marti, bigarum victricum dexterior. De cuius capite non levis contentio solebat esse inter Suburanenses et Sacravienses, ut hi in regiae pariete, illi ad turrim Mamiliam id figerent; eiusdemque coda tanta celeritate perfertur in regiam, ut ex ea sanguis distillet in focum participandae rei divinae gratia, quem hostiae loco quidam Marti bellico deo sacrari dicunt,’ &c. Then follow three examples of horse-sacrifices. Paul. 179 adds no fresh information. Paul. 220 ‘Panibus redimibant caput equi immolati idibus Octobribus in campo Martio, quia id sacrificium fiebat ob frugum eventum, et equus potius quam bos immolabatur, quod hic bello, bos frugibus pariendis est aptus.’ (The meaning of these last words will be considered presently.) Cp. Plutarch, Qu. Rom. 97; probably from Verrius, perhaps indirectly through Juba. Plut. by a mistake puts the rite on the Ides of December.

1056. See note in Preller’s Regionen der Stadi Rom, p. 174. They are placed by Kiepert and Hülsen (map 2) close to the Tiber and near the Mausoleum of Augustus, and a long way from the old ara Martis. Perhaps the position of the latter had changed as the Campus came to be built over.

1057. Livy, 35. 10; 40. 45 (the censors after their election sat in Campo on their curule chairs ‘ad aram Martis’). Roscher, Lex. s. v. Mars, 2389.

1058. What this was is not known: some think a kind of peel-tower. Possibly a tower in quadriviis: cf. definition of compitum in Schol. Pers. 4. 28.

1059. Ovid, Fasti, 4. 731 foll.; Prop. 5. (4.) 1. 19. See on Parilia and Fordicidia.

1060. Preller, 1. 366; Marquardt, 334; Schwegler, Röm. Gesch. ii. 46; Roscher, Apollo und Mars, 64 foll.

1061. Mythologische Forschungen, 156-201.

1062. de Feriis, ix.

1063. I add this (see on Vestalia). Mannhardt had not handled it.

1064. Levit. 23 fin.

1065. Had they referred to the crops of the next season we might have expected ‘ob bonum frugum eventum.’

1066. So Wissowa, de Feriis, ix. He thinks that it was only an attempt to explain the panes: but he is wrong in insisting that the Vestalia (where, as we saw, the same decoration occurs) had nothing to do with ‘frugum eventus.’

1067. To me it looks as if some words had dropped out of the text, perhaps after the word eventum; see the passage quoted above, p. 242, note 1.

1068. Given in Mannhardt’s next section, p. 169.

1069. See under May 15 (Argei).

1070. Mannhardt has not suggested what seems not impossible, that the horse represented Mars himself—in which case we might allow that Mars was, among other things, a vegetation deity.

1071. See his language at the top of p. 164.

1072. He ingeniously suggests that these cases of decapitation may be explained by the old custom of cutting off the corn-ears so as to leave almost the whole of the stalk. (See his Korndämonen, p. 35.) That this method existed in Latium seems proved by a passage in Livy, 22. 1 ‘Antii metentibus cruentas in corbem spicas cecidisse.’

1073. Dion. Hal. i. 33, who compares an Arcadian Hippokrateia.

1074. Op. cit. p. 182.

1075. See Golden Bough, i. 68 foll., and Mannhardt, A. W. F. 214 foll.

1076. Mannhardt, A. W. F. l. c.

1077. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, 167.

1078. p. 185 foll. The tail in Roman ritual was ‘offa penita.’ Marq. 335, note 1.

1079. In Silesia, &c., the word is Zâl, Zôl, which I suppose = tail.

1080. Golden Bough, ii. 65. Jevons, Introduction to Plut. Q. R. p. lxix. He quotes an example from Africa.

1081. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, Lect. ix. In this case, according to M., it was the life of the Corn-spirit—so of generation in general.

1082. Schwegler, R. G. i. 739; Ambrosch, Studien, 200 foll.

1083. Evidence for this in Liv. i 2; Serv. Aen. 9. 274.

1084. See e. g. Crooke’s Folklore of Northern India, vol. ii. pp. 176 and 321. Crooke looks on these fights (he should have said, the possession of the object which is the cause of the fight) as charms for rain or fertility. So in the plains of N.-W. India, ‘plenty is supposed to follow the side which is victorious.’

1085. Veram huius sacri rationem inter veteres ii viderunt quorum sententiam ita refert Festus ‘equum hostiae loco Marti bellico deo sacrari’ (de Feriis, p. x).

1086. See under March 14 and 19.

1087. Wissowa thinks it was originally the 15th (Ides); but Mommsen dissents in his note on Oct. 15 (C. I. L. 332). It is the only feast-day in the calendar which is an even number. Perhaps it was changed because of the popularity of the revels, &c., on the Ides.

1088. Charisius, p. 81; Marq. 435.

1089. This point of the parallel was first noticed by Wissowa, who, as just noted, believes the day of Equirria to have been in each case the Ides.

1090. An apt illustration of this aspect of Mars, in combination with the older primitive form of ritual, is supplied by the strange sacrifice by Julius Caesar of two mutinous soldiers, recorded by Dio Cassius, 43. 24. They were offered to Mars in the Campus Martius by the Flamen Martialis in the presence of the Pontifices, and their heads were nailed up on the Regia. (Hence Marq. infers that it was this flamen who sacrificed the October horse.) Caesar was in Rome in October of the year to which D. C. attributes this deed, B.C. 46.

1091. L. L. 6. 62. Cp. Festus, 19 ‘Armilustrium festum erat apud Romanos, quo res divinas armati faciebant ac dum sacrificarent tubis canebant.’ See on March 19 and 23.