vi Kal. Sept. (Aug. 27). NP.
VOLT[URNALIA]. (ALLIF. MAFF. VALL.)
FERIAE VOLTURNO. (ARV. INTER ADDITA POSTERIORA.)
VOLTURNO FLUMINI SACRIFICIUM. (VALL.)
Of this very ancient and perhaps obsolete rite nothing seems to have been known to the later Latin scholars, or they did not think it worth comment. Varro mentions a Flamen Volturnalis, but tells us nothing about him. From the occurrence of the name for a river in Campania it may be guessed that the god in this case was a river also; and if so, it must be the Tiber. This is Mommsen’s conclusion, and the only difficulty he finds in it is that (in his view) Portunus is also the Tiber[[925]]. Why did he not see that the same river-god, even if bearing different names, could hardly have two flamines? I am content to see in Volturnus an old name for the Tiber, signifying the winding snake-like river[[926]], and in Portunus a god of storehouses, as I have explained above.
Here, then, we perhaps have a trace of the lost cult of the Tiber, which assuredly must have existed in the earliest times—and the flamen is the proof of its permanent importance. When the name was changed to Tiber we do not know, nor whether ‘Albula’ marks an intermediate stage between the two; but that this was the work of the pontifices seems likely from Servius[[927]], who writes ‘Tiberinus ... a pontificibus indigitari solet.’ Of a god Tiberinus there is no single early record.
It should just be mentioned that Jordan[[928]], relying on Lucretius, 5. 745, thought it probable that Volturnus might be a god of whirlwinds; and Huschke[[929]] has an even wilder suggestion, which need not here be mentioned.