vi Id. Sext. (Aug. 9). F. (allip.) NP. (amit. maff. etc.)
SOLI INDIGITI IN COLLE QUIRINALE. (AMIT. ALLIF.)
SOL[IS] INDIGITIS IN COLLE QUIRINALE SACRIFICIUM PUBLICUM. (VALL.)
There was an ancient worship of Sol on the Quirinal, which was believed to be of Sabine origin. A Solis pulvinar close to the temple of Quirinus is mentioned, and the Gens Aurelia was said to have had charge of the cult[[800]].
But the Sol of August 9 is called in the calendars Sol Indiges. What are we to understand by this word, which appears in the names Di Indigetes, Jupiter Indiges, or Indigetes simply? The Roman scholars themselves were not agreed on the point; the general opinion was that it meant ‘of or belonging to a certain place,’ i. e. fixed there by origin and protecting it[[801]]. This view has also been generally adopted, on etymological or other grounds, by modern writers, including Preller[[802]]. Recently a somewhat different explanation has been put forward in the Mythological Lexicon, suggested by Reifferscheid in his lectures at Breslau. According to this view, Indiges (from indu and root ag in agere) was a deity working in a particular act, business, place, &c., of men’s activity, and in no other; it is of pontifical origin, like its cognate indigitamenta, and is therefore not a survival from the oldest religious forms[[803]].
The second of these explanations does not seem to help us to understand what was meant by Sol Indiges; and its exponent in the Lexicon, in order to explain this, falls back on an ingenious suggestion made long ago by Preller. In dealing with Sol Indiges, Preller explained Indiges as = index, and conjectured that the name was not given to Sol until after the eclipse which foretold the death of Caesar, comparing the lines of Virgil (Georg. 1. 463 foll.):
Sol tibi signa dabit. Solem quis dicere falsum
Audeat? ille etiam caecos instare tumultus
Saepe monet, fraudemque et operta tumescere bella.
Ille etiam exstincto miseratus Caesare Romam:
Cum caput obscura nitidum ferrugine texit,
Impiaque aeternam timuerunt saecula noctem.
Preller may be right; and if he were, we should have no further trouble in this case. In the pre-Julian calendar, on this hypothesis, the word Indiges was absent. This is also the opinion of the last scholar who, so far as I know, has touched the question; but Wissowa[[804]], with reason as I think, reverts to the first explanation given above of the word Indiges (‘of or belonging to a certain place’), and believes that the word, when added to Sol in the Julian calendar, was simply meant to distinguish the real indigenous Sun-god from foreign solar deities.