vi Id. Iun. (June 8). N.
MENTI IN CAPITOLIO. (VEN. MAFF. VI MINORES.)
The temple of Mens was vowed by T. Otacilius (praetor) in 217 B.C., after the battle of Trasimenus ‘propter neglegentiam caerimoniarum auspiciorumque[[589]],’ and dedicated in 215 B.C., by the same man as duumvir aedibus dedicandis[[590]]. The vow was the result of an inspection of the Sibylline books, from which we might infer that the goddess was a stranger[[591]]. If so, who was she, and whence? Reasoning from the fact that in the same year, in the same place, and by the same man, a temple was dedicated to Venus Erycina[[592]], Preller guessed that this Mens was not a mere abstraction, but another form of the same Venus; for a Venus Mimnermia or Meminia is mentioned by Servius[[593]], ‘quod meminerit omnium.’
However this may be, the foundation of a cult of Mens at so critical a moment of their fortunes is very characteristic of the Roman spirit of that age; it was an appeal to ‘something not themselves which made for righteousness’ to help them to remember their caerimoniae, and not to neglect their auspicia. It is remarkable that this temple of Mens was restored by M. Aemilius Scaurus probably amid the disasters of the Cimbrian war a century later[[594]].