The festivals of this month are so exceedingly obscure that it seems hopeless to try to connect them in any definite way with the operations either of nature or of man. We know that this was the time when the sun’s heat became oppressive and dangerous; statistics show at the present day that the rate of mortality rises at Rome to its greatest height in July and August, as indeed is the case in southern latitudes generally. We know also that harvest of various kinds was going on in this month: ‘Quarto intervallo inter solstitium et caniculam plerique messem faciunt,’ writes Varro (R. R. 1. 32). We should have expected that the unhealthy season and the harvest would have left their mark on the calendar; but in the scantiness of our information we can find very few traces of their influence. We here lose the company of Ovid, who might, in spite of his inevitable ignorance, have incidentally thrown some ray of light upon the darkness; but it is clear that even Varro and Verrius knew hardly anything of the almost obsolete festivals of this month. The Poplifugia, the Lucaria, the Neptunalia, and the Furrinalia, had all at one time been great festivals, for they are marked in large capitals in the ancient calendars; but they had no more meaning for the Roman of Varro’s time than the lesser saints’-days of our calendar have for the ordinary Englishman of to-day. The ludi Apollinares, of much later date, which always maintained their interest, did not fall upon the days of any of these festivals, or obliterate them in the minds of the people; they must have decayed from pure inanition—want of practical correlation with the life and interests of a great city.

POPLIF[UGIA]. (MAFF. AMIT. ANT.)

FERIAE IOVI. (AMIT.)

The note ‘feriae Iovi’ in the calendar of Amiternum is confirmed in a curious way, by a statement of Dio Cassius^[708], who says that in B.C. 42 the Senate passed a decree that Caesar’s birthday should be celebrated on this day^[709], and that any one who refused to take part in the celebration should be ‘sacer Iovi et Divo Iulio.’ But we know far too little of the rites of this day to enable us to make even a guess at the meaning of its connexion with Jupiter. It is just worth noting that two days later we find a festival of Juno, the Nonae Caprotinae; the two days may have had some connexion with each other, being separated by an interval of one day, as is the case with the three days of the Lemuria, the two days of the Lucaria in this month, and in other instances^[710]; and their rites were explained by two parts of the same aetiological story—viz. that the Romans fled before the Fidenates on the 5th, and in turn defeated them on the 7th^[711]. But we are quite in the dark as to the meaning of such a connexion, if such there was. Nor can we explain the singular fact that this is the only festival in the whole year, marked in large capitals in the calendars, which falls before the Nones^[712].

There is hardly a word in the whole calendar the meaning of which is so entirely unknown to us as this word Poplifugia. Of the parallel one, the Regifugium in February, something can be made out, as we shall see^[713]; and it is not unlikely that the ritualistic meaning concealed in both may be much the same. But all attempts to find a definite explanation for Poplifugia have so far been fruitless, with the single exception perhaps of that of Schwegler^[714], who himself made the serious blunder of confounding this day with the Nonae Caprotinae. It is true that the two days and their rites were confused even in antiquity, but only by late writers^[715]; the calendars, on the other hand, are perfectly plain and so is Varro^[716], who proceeds from the one to the other in a way that can leave no doubt that he understood them as distinct.

The simple fact is that the meaning of the word Poplifugia had wholly vanished when the calendar began to be studied. Ingenuity and fancy, as usual, took the place of knowledge, and two legends were the result—the one connecting the word with the flight of the Romans from an army of their neighbours of Fidenae, after the retirement of the Gauls from the city^[717]; the other interpreting it as a memorial of the flight of the people after the disappearance of Romulus in the darkness of an eclipse or sudden tempest^[718]. The first of these legends may be dismissed at once; the large capitals in which the name Poplifugia appears in the fragments of the three calendars which preserve it, are sufficient evidence that it must have been far older than the Gallic invasion^[719]. The second legend might suggest that the story itself of the death of Romulus had grown out of some religious rite performed at this time of year; and it was indeed traditionally connected with the Nones of this month^[720]. But that day is unluckily not the day of the Poplifugia, which it is hardly possible to connect with the disappearance of Romulus. There may, however, have been a connexion between the rites of the two days, as has been pointed out above; and this being so, it is worth while to notice a suggestion made by Schwegler, in spite of the fact that he confused the two days together. He saw that the disappearance of Romulus was said to have occurred while he was holding a lustratio of the citizens^[721], and concluded that the Poplifugia may have been an ancient rite of lustration—an idea which other writers have been content to follow without always giving him the credit of it^[722].

Such a rite may very well be indicated by the following sentence of Varro^[723]—the only one which gives us any solid information on the question: Aliquot huius diei vestigia fugae in sacris apparent, de quibus rebus antiquitatum libri plura referunt. It seems not unreasonable to guess that the rite was one of those in which the priest, or in this case, as it would seem, the people also, fled from the spot after the sacrifice had been concluded. As the slayer of the ox at the Athenian Bouphonia (which curiously enough took place just at this same time of year) fled as one guilty of blood, so it may possibly have been that priest and people at Rome fled after some similar sacrifice, and for the same reason^[724]. Or it may have been that they fled from the victim as a scapegoat which was destined to carry away from the city some pollution or pestilence. It is interesting to find at Iguvium in Umbria some ‘vestigia fugae,’ not of the people, indeed, but of victims, at a lustratio populi which seems to have had some object of this kind^[725]. Heifers were put to flight, then caught and killed, apparently in order to carry off evils from the city^[726], as well as to represent and secure the defeat of its enemies. Such performances seem especially apt to occur at sickly seasons^[727]; and as the unhealthy season began at Rome in July^[728], it is just possible that the Poplifugia was a ceremony of this class.

Non. Quinct. (July 7). N.

This day does not appear as a festival in the old calendars; but the late one of Silvius^[729] notes it as Ancillarum Feriae, or Feast of Handmaids, and adds the explanatory story which is found also in Plutarch and Macrobius^[730]. The victorious Fidenates having demanded the surrender of the wives of the Romans, the latter made over to them their ancillae, dressed in their mistresses’ robes, by the advice of a certain Philotis, or Tutula^[731], one of the handmaids. Ausonius alludes to the custom that gave rise to the story:

Plutarch also tells us that on this day the ancillae not only wore the matron’s dress, but had license for what may be described as a game of romps; they beat each other, threw stones at each other, and scoffed at the passers by^[733].

This last point supplies us with a possible clue both to the origin of the custom and the explanatory legend. One of the most frequent customs at harvest-time used to be, and still is in some places, for the harvesters to mock at, and even to use roughly, any stranger who appears on the field; frequently he is tied up with straw, even by the women binding the sheaves, and only released on promise of money, brandy, &c.; or he is ducked in water, or half-buried, or in pretence beheaded^[734]. The stranger in such cases is explained as representing the spirit of the corn; the examples collected by Mannhardt and Mr. Frazer seem fairly conclusive on this point^[735]. The wearing of the matron’s dress also seems to be a combination of the familiar practices of the winter Saturnalia with harvest customs, which in various forms is by no means uncommon^[736], though I have not found a case of exchange of dress after harvest.

Thus it would seem possible that we have here a relic of Italian harvest-custom; and this is confirmed by the statement of Tertullian that there was on this day a sacrifice to the harvest-god Consus^[737], at his underground altar in the Circus Maximus, of which we shall have more to say under Aug. 21 (Consualia). It is worth noting here that just as the legend of the Rape of the Sabines was connected with the Consualia^[738], so the analogous story of the demand of the Fidenates for Roman women is associated with the Ancillarum Feriae, and the day of the sacrifice to Consus. This not only serves to connect together the two days of Consus-worship, but suggests that harvest was a favourable opportunity for the practice of capturing wives in primitive Italy, when the women were out in the fields, and might be carried off by a sudden incursion.

This day was also known as Nonae Caprotinae, because the women, presumably those who had been helping at the harvest, both bond and free^[739], sacrificed to Juno Caprotina under a wild fig-tree (caprificus) in the Campus Martius^[740]. Juno Caprotina was a Latin goddess, of great renown at Falerii^[741], where the goat from which she took her name appears in the legend of her cult. The character of Juno as the representative of the female principle of human life^[742] suits well enough with the prominence of women both in the customs and legends connected with the day; and the fig-tree with its milky juice, which was used, according to Macrobius, in the sacrifice to Juno instead of milk, has also its significance^[743]. Varro adds that a rod (virga) was also cut from this tree^[744], without telling us for what purpose it was used; and it has been ingeniously conjectured that it was with this that the handmaids beat each other as Plutarch describes, to produce fertility, just as at the Lupercalia the women were beaten with strips cut from the skins of the victims (amiculum Junonis). But this is mere conjecture, and Varro’s statement is too indefinite to be pressed^[745].

viii Id. Quinct. (July 8). N.

‘Piso ait vitulam victoriam nominari, cuius rei hoc argumentum profert, quod postridio nonas Iulias re bene gesta, cum pridie populus a Tuscis in fugam versus sit (unde Populifugia vocantur), post victoriam certis sacrificiis fiat vitulatio^[746].’

I must be content with quoting this passage, and without comment; it will suffice to show that the meaning of the word ‘vitulatio’ was entirely unknown to Roman scholars. Why they should not have connected it with vitulus I know not: we may remember that in the Iguvian ritual vituli seem to have performed the function of scapegoats^[747]. If the vitulatio is in any way to be connected with the Poplifugia, as it was indeed in the legend as given by Macrobius above, it may be worth while to remember that that day is marked in one calendar as ‘feriae Iovi,’ and that the vitulus (heifer) was the special victim of Jupiter^[748].

Prid. Non. Quinct.—iii Id. Quinct. (July 6-13).

LUDI APOLLINARES.

All these days are marked ‘ludi’ in Maff. Amit. Ant.; the 6th ‘ludi Apoll[ini],’ and the 13th ‘ludi in circo.’

These games^[749] were instituted in 212 B.C., for a single occasion only, at the most dangerous period of the war with Hannibal, when he had taken Tarentum and invaded Campania. Recourse was had to the Sibylline books and to the Italian oracles of Marcius, and the latter answered as follows^[750]:

‘Hostes Romani si expellere voltis, vomicamque quae gentium venit longe, Apollini vovendos censeo ludos, qui quotannis Apollini fiant,’ &c. The games were held, as we may suppose, on the analogy of the ludi plebeii, originally on the 13th day of the month^[751], and were, in course of time, extended backwards till in the Julian calendar we find them lasting from the 6th to the 13th. They had a Greek character from the first; they were superintended by the Decemviri sacris faciundis, who consulted the Sibylline books and organized the ritual of foreign cults; and they included scenic shows, after the Greek fashion, as well as chariot races^[752].

It was matter of dispute whether in this year, 212, Apollo was expected to show his favour to Rome as a conqueror of her foe or as an averter of pestilence in the summer heats; both functions were within his range. But in 208 we are told that the ludi were renewed by a lex, made permanent, and fixed for July 13 in consequence of a pestilence^[753]; and we may fairly assume that this was, in part at least, the cause of their institution four years earlier. What little we know of the traditions of Apollo-worship at Rome points in the same direction. His oldest temple in the Flaminian fields, where, according to Livy, a still more ancient shrine once stood^[754], was vowed in 432 B.C. in consequence of a pestilence; and the god had also the cult-title Medicus^[755]. The next occasion on which we meet with the cult is that of the first institution of a lectisternium in 397 B.C., Livy’s account of which is worth condensing^[756]. That year was remarkable for an extremely cold winter, which was followed by an equally unhealthy summer, destructive to all kinds of animals. As the cause of this pestilence could not be discovered, the Sibylline books were consulted; the result of which was the introduction of a lectisternium, at which three couches were laid out with great magnificence, on which reposed Apollo and Latona, Diana and Hercules, Mercurius and Neptunus, whose favour the people besought for eight days.

The cult of Apollo, though thus introduced in its full magnificence at Rome in historical times, was, ‘so old in Italy as almost to give the impression of being indigenous^[757].’ Tradition ascribed to Tarquinius Superbus the introduction from Cumae of the Sibylline oracles, which were intimately connected with Apollo-worship; and that Etruscan king may well have been familiar with the Greek god, who was well known in Etruria as Aplu^[758], and who was worshipped at Caere, the home of the Tarquinian family, which city had a ‘treasury’ at Delphi^[759]. The Romans themselves, according to a tradition which is by no means improbable, had very early dealings with the Delphic oracle.

It does not seem certain that Apollo displaced any other deity when transplanted to Rome. It has been thought that the obscure Veiovis became clothed with some of Apollo’s characteristics, but this is extremely doubtful^[760]. The mysterious deity of Soracte, Soranus, is called Apollo by Virgil^[761]; this, however, is not a true displacement, like that, e. g., of the ancient Ceres by the characteristics of Demeter, but merely a poetical substitution of a familiar name for an unfamiliar one which was unquestionably old Italian.

It does not seem probable that in the Republican period the cult of Apollo had any special influence, either religious or ethical, for the Roman people generally. It was a priestly experiment—a new physician was called in at perilous times, according to the fashion of the Roman oligarchy, either to give advice by his oracles, or to receive honours for his benefits as ??e???a???. It is in the age of Augustus that the cult begins to be important; the family of the Caesars was said to have had an ancient connexion with it^[762], and after the victory at Actium, where a temple of Apollo stood on the promontory, Augustus not only enlarged and adorned this one, but built another on the Palatine, near his own house, to Apollo Palatinus. But for the ‘Apollinism’ of Augustus, and for the important part played by the god in the ludi saeculares of B.C. 17, I must refer the reader to other works^[763].

xiv Kal. Sext. (July 19). NP.

LUCAR[IA]. (MAFF. AMIT.)

xii Kal. Sext. (July 21). NP.

LUCAR[IA]. (MAFF. AMIT.)

Here, as in the next two festivals we have to consider, we are but ‘dipping buckets into empty wells.’ The ritual, and therefore the original meaning of this festival, is wholly lost to us, as indeed it was to the Romans of Varro’s time. Varro, in his list of festivals, does not even mention this one; but it is possible that some words have here dropped out of his text^[764]. The only light we have comes at second-hand from Verrius Flaccus^[765]. ‘Lucaria festa in luco colebant Romani, qui permagnus inter viam Salariam et Tiberim fuit, pro eo, quod victi a Gallis fugientes^[766] e praelio ibi se occultaverint.’ This passage reminds us of the story explanatory of the Poplifugia, and might suggest, as in that case, an expiatory sacrifice and flight of the people from a scapegoat destined to carry away disease. But here we know of no vestigia fugae in the cult, such as Varro tells us were apparent at the Poplifugia.

The only possible guess we can make must rest on the name itself, taken together with what Festus tells us of the great wood once existing between the Via Salaria and the Tiber, in which the festival was held—a wood which no doubt occupied the Pincian hill, and the region afterwards laid out in gardens by Lucullus, Pompeius, and Sallust the historian. Lucaria is formed from lucar as Lemuria from lemur; and lucar, though in later times it meant ‘the sum disbursed from the aerarium for the games^[767],’ drawn probably from the receipts of the sacred groves, may also at one time itself have meant a grove. An inscription from the Latin colony of Luceria shows us lucar in this sense^[768]:

IN · HOCE · LUCARID · STIRCUS · NE · IS · FUNDATID, &c.

Now there can be no doubt about the great importance of woods, or rather of clearings in them, in the ancient Italian religion. ‘Nemus and lucus,’ says Preller^[769], ‘like so many other words, remind us of the old Italian life of woodland and clearing. Nemus is a pasturage, lucus a “light” or clearing^[770], in the forest, where men settled and immediately began to look to the interests of the spirits of the woodland, and especially of Silvanus, who is at once the god of the wild life of the woodland and of the settler in the forest—the backwoodsman.’ The woods left standing as civilization and agriculture advanced continued to be the abodes of numina, not only of the great Jupiter, who, as we shall see, was worshipped in groves all over Italy^[771], and of Diana, who at Aricia bore the title of Nemorensis, but of innumerable spirits of the old worship, Fauni, Silvani, and other manifestations of the idea most definitely conceived in the great god Mars^[772]. But men could not of course know for certain what spirits dwelt in a wood, whose anger might be roused by intrusion or tree-felling; and old Cato, among his many prescriptions, material and religious, gives one in the form of an invocation to such unknown deities if an intrusion had to be made. It is worth quoting, and runs as follows^[773]: ‘Lucum conlucare Romano more sic oportet. Porco piaculo facito. Sic verba concipito: Si Deus, si Dea es, quoium illud sacrum est, uti tibi ius siet porco piaculo facere, illiusce sacri coercendi ergo. Harumce rerum ergo, sive ego, sive quis iussu meo fecerit, uti id recte factum siet. Eius rei ergo te hoc porco piaculo immolando bonas preces precor, uti sies volens propitius mihi, domo familiaeque meae, liberisque meis. Harumce rerum ergo macte hoc porco piaculo immolando esto.’

Applying these facts to the problem of the Lucaria, though necessarily with hesitation, and remembering the position of the wood and the date of the festival, we may perhaps arrive at the following conclusion; that this was a propitiatory worship offered to the deities inhabiting the woods which bordered on the cultivated Roman ager. The time when the corn was being gathered in, and the men and women were in the fields, would be by no means unsuitable for such propitiation. It need not have been addressed to any special deity, any more than that of Cato, or as I believe, the ritual of the Lupercalia^[774]; it belonged to the most primitive of Roman rites, and partly for that reason, partly also from the absorption of land by large private owners^[775], it fell into desuetude. The grove of the Fratres Arvales and the decay of their cult (also addressed to a nameless deity) offers an analogy on the other side of Rome, towards Ostia.

Such a hypothesis seems not unreasonable, though it is based rather on general than particular evidence. It is at any rate better than the wild guessing of one German inquirer, who is always at home when there is no information. Huschke^[776] believes that the words Lucaria and Luceres (the ancient Roman tribe-name) are both derived from lucus because the Lucaria take place in July, which is the auspication-month of the Luceres. And there are two days of this festival, because the Luceres owed protection both to the Romani and Quirites (Rhamnes and Tities) and therefore worshipped both Janus and Quirinus.

x Kal. Sext. (July 23). NP.

NEPT[UNALIA]. (PINC. MAFF.)

FERIAE NEPTUNO. (PINC. ALLIF.)

The early history of Neptunus is a mystery, and we learn hardly anything about him from his festival. We know that it took place in the heat of summer, and that booths or huts made of the foliage of trees were used at it, to keep the sun off the worshippers—and that is all^[777]. Neither of these facts suggests a sea-god, such as we are accustomed to see in Neptune; yet they are hardly strong enough to enable us to build on them any other hypothesis as to his character or functions. Nor does his name help us. Though it constantly appears in Etruscan art as the name of a god who has the characteristics of the Greek Poseidon, it is said not to be of genuine Etruscan origin^[778]. If this be so, the Etruscans must have borrowed it from some people who already used it of a sea-god when the loan was made; but one does not see why this great seafaring people should have gone outside the language of their own religion for a name for their deity of the sea.

In the ancient cult-formulae preserved by Gellius^[779], Neptunus is coupled with a female name Salacia; and of this Varro writes ‘Salacia Neptuni a salo’—an etymology no doubt suggested by the later identification of Neptunus with Poseidon. Salacia is in my opinion rather to be referred to salax (‘lustful,’ &c.), and, like Nerio Martis^[780], to be taken as indicating the virile force of Neptunus as the divine progenitor of a stock^[781]. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that this god was known as Neptunus pater, like Mars, Janus, Saturnus, and Jupiter himself^[782]; all of whom are associated in cult or legend with the early history of Latin stocks.

When Neptunus first meets us in Roman history, he has already put on the attributes of the Greek Poseidon; this was in B.C. 399, at the first lectisternium, where he is in company with Apollo and Latona, Diana and Hercules, and is specially coupled with Mercurius (= Hermes)^[783]. What characteristics of his suggested the identification, either here or in Etruria, we cannot tell. We find no trace of any evidence connecting him with the sea; and the coupling with Hermes need mean no more than that both this god and Poseidon found their way to Rome through the medium of Greek trade.

It has recently been conjectured^[784] that the object of both the Lucaria and Neptunalia was to avert the heat and drought of July, and to propitiate the deities of water and springs, of whom Neptunus (judging from his identification with Poseidon) may possibly have been one; but this is no more than a vague guess, which its author only puts forward ‘with all reserve.’

viii Kal. Sext. (July 25). NP.

FURR[INALIA]. (PINC. ALLIF. MAFF.)

FERIAE FURRINAE (PINC. ALLIF.)

It seems to be the lesson of the festivals of July that there was an early stage of the Roman religion which had lost all meaning for the Romans themselves when they began to inquire into the history of their own religion. Of this last festival of the month we know no single item in the cult, and therefore have nothing substantial to guide us. It seems almost certain that even Varro and Verrius Flaccus^[785] knew nothing of the festival but its name as it stood in the calendar. Nor did they know anything of the goddess Furrina or Furina. Varro is explicit; he says that she was celebrated ‘apud antiquos,’ for they gave her an annual festival and a flamen, but that in his day there were hardly a dozen Romans who knew either her name or anything about her.

Varro is no doubt right in arguing from the festival and the flamen to the ancient honour in which she was held; and these facts also tend to prove that she was a single deity, and quite distinct from the Furiae with whom the later Romans as well as the Greeks naturally confounded her—an inference which is confirmed by the long u indicated by the double r in the calendars^[786].

There is therefore nothing but the etymology to tell us anything about the goddess, and from this source we cannot expect to learn anything certain. Preller plausibly suggested a connexion with fur, furvus, and fuscus, from a root meaning dark or secret; and if this were correct she might be a deity of the under-world or of the darkness. BÜcheler in his Umbrica^[787] suggested a comparison with the Umbrian furfare = februare (‘to purify’), which will at least serve to show the difficulty of basing conclusions on etymological reasoning. Jordan conjectured that the festival had to do with the averting of dangerous summer heat^[788]—a conclusion that is natural enough, but does not seem to rest on any evidence but its date. Lastly, Huschke^[789], again in his element, boldly asserts that the Furrinalia served to appease the deities of revenge who hailed from the black region of Vediovis—wrongly confusing Furrina and the Furiae. It will be quite obvious from these instances that it is as hopeless as it is useless to attempt to discover the nature of either goddess or festival by means of etymological reasoning.