[625]. Ovid, Fasti, vi. 101-168; Macrobius, Sat. i. 12. 31-33; Tertullian, Ad nationes, ii. 9; Varro, quoted by Nonius Marcellus, De compendiosa doctrina, p. 390, ed. L. Quicherat. There was a sacred beechen grove of Diana on a hill called Corne near Tusculum (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvi. 242). But Corne has probably no connection with Carna. The grove of Helernus was crowded with worshippers on the first of February (Ovid, Fasti, ii. 67, where Helerni is a conjectural emendation for Averni or Asyli). Nothing else is known about Helernus, unless with Merkel (in his edition of Ovid’s Fasti, pp. cxlviii. sq.) we read Elerno for Eterno in Festus, p. 93, ed. C. O. Müller. In that case it would seem that black oxen were sacrificed to him. From the association of Carna with Janus it was inferred by Merkel (l.c.) that the grove of Helernus stood on or near the Janiculum, where there was a grove of oaks (see above, p. 186). But the language of Ovid (Fasti, ii. 67) points rather to the mouth of the Tiber.
[627]. Ovid, Fasti, vi. 129-168. A Roman bride on the way to her husband’s house was preceded by a boy bearing a torch of buckthorn (spina alba, Festus, s.v. “Patrimi,” p. 245, ed. C. O. Müller; Varro, quoted by Nonius Marcellus, De compendiosa doctrina, s.v. “Fax,” p. 116, ed. L. Quicherat). The intention probably was to defend her from enchantment and evil spirits. Branches of buckthorn were also thought to protect a house against thunderbolts (Columella, De re rustica, x. 346 sq.).
[629]. Dioscorides, De arte medica, i. 119.
[630]. Scholiast on Nicander, Theriaca, 861.
[631]. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum, iv. 54-57.
[633]. Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 111 εἰκὸς μὲν οὖν ἐστι καὶ τὸν ἱερέα τοῦ Διὸς ὥσπερ ἔμψυχον καὶ ἱερὸν ἄγαλμα καταφύξιμον ἀνεῖσθαι τοῖς δεομένοις; L. Preller, Römische Mythologie, 3rd Ed., i. 201; F. B. Jevons, Plutarch’s Romane Questions, p. lxxiii.; C. Julian, in Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines, ii. 1156 sqq.
[634]. Cicero, De re publica, iii. 13. 22; Virgil, Aen. x. 112; Horace, Sat. ii. 1. 42 sq.; Ovid, Fasti, vi. 37; Varro, De lingua Latina, v. 6. 7; Livy, v. 21. 2, v. 23. 7; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxv. 115; Flavius Vopiscus, Probus, xii. 7; L. Preller, Römische Mythologie, 3rd Ed., i. 205, 284; W. H. Roscher, Lexikon d. griech. u. röm. Mythologie, ii. 600 sqq.