[635]. See above, pp. [179] sq.
[636]. Cicero, Philippics, ii. 43. 110; Suetonius, Divus Julius, 76; Dio Cassius, xliv. 6. The coincidence has been pointed out by Mr. A. B. Cook (Classical Review, xviii. 371).
[637]. Livy, i. 20. 1 sq.
[638]. Numa was not the only Roman king who is said to have enjoyed the favours of a goddess. Romulus was married to Hersilia, who seems to have been a Sabine goddess. Ovid tells us how, when the dead Romulus had been raised to the rank of a god under the name of Quirinus, his widow Hersilia was deified as his consort. Thus, if Quirinus was a Sabine oak-god, his wife would be an oak-goddess, like Egeria. See Ovid, Metam. xiv. 829-851. Compare Livy, i. 11. 2; Plutarch, Numa, 14. On Hersilia as a goddess see A. Schwegler, Römische Geschichte, i. 478, note 10; L. Preller, Römische Mythologie, 3rd Ed., i. 372. Again, of King Servius Tullius we read how the goddess Fortuna, smitten with love of him, used to enter his house nightly by a window. See Ovid, Fasti, vi. 569 sqq.; Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, 36; id., De fortuna Romanorum, 10. However, the origin and nature of Fortuna are too obscure to allow us to base any conclusions on this legend. For various more or less conjectural explanations of the goddess see W. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, pp. 161-172.
[639]. Plutarch, De fortuna Romanorum, 10; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Rom. iv. 1 sq.; Ovid, Fasti, vi. 627-636; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 241, xxxvi. 204; Livy, i. 39; Servius on Virgil, Aen. ii. 683; Arnobius, Adversus nationes, v. 18. According to the Etruscan annals, Servius Tullius was an Etruscan by name Mastarna, who came to Rome with his friend Caeles Vibenna, and, changing his name, obtained the kingdom. This was stated by the Emperor Claudius in a speech of which fragments are engraved on a bronze tablet found at Lyons. See Tacitus, Annals, ed. Orelli, 2nd Ed., p. 342. As the emperor wrote a history of Etruria in twenty books (Suetonius, Divus Claudius, 42) he probably had some authority for the statement, and the historical, or at least legendary, character of Mastarna and Caeles Vibenna is vouched for by a painting inscribed with their names, which was found in 1857 in an Etruscan tomb at Vulci. See G. Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, 3rd Ed., ii. 506 sq. But from this it by no means follows that the identification of Mastarna with Servius Tullius was correct. Schwegler preferred the Roman to the Etruscan tradition (Römische Geschichte, i. 720 sq.), and so, after long hesitation, did Niebuhr (History of Rome, 3rd Ed., i. 380 sqq.). It is fair to add that both these historians wrote before the discovery of the tomb at Vulci.
[640]. A. Schwegler, Römische Geschichte, i. 715; L. Preller, Römische Mythologie, 3rd Ed., ii. 344.
[641]. Plutarch, Romulus, 2.
[642]. Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Ant. Rom. i. 76 sq.; Livy, i. 3 sq.; Plutarch, Romulus, 3; Zonaras, Annal. vii. 1; Justin, xliii. 2. 1-3.
[643]. Servius on Virgil, Aen. vii. 678.
[644]. Virgil, Aen. vii. 343.