[655]. This explanation was first, so far as I know, given by me in my Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship (London, 1905), p. 221. It has since been adopted by Mr. E. Fehrle (Die kultische Keuschheit im Altertum, Giessen, 1910, pp. 210 sqq.).
[656]. Aulus Gellius, xiv. 7. 7. Compare Servius on Virgil, Aen. vii. 153, ix. 4.
[657]. Ovid, Fasti, vi. 261 sq.
[658]. Festus, s.v. “penus,” p. 250, ed. C. O. Müller, where for saepius we must obviously read saeptus.
[659]. Ovid, Fasti, i. 199, iii. 183 sq.; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Rom. i. 79. 11. For the situation of the hut see also Plutarch, Romulus, 20.
[660]. Conon, Narrationes, 48; Vitruvius, ii. 1. 5, p. 35, ed. Rose and Müller-Strübing; Macrobius, Saturn. i. 15. 10. Compare Virgil, Aen. viii. 653 sq. As to the two huts on the Palatine and the Capitol see A. Schwegler, Römische Geschichte, i. 394; L. Jahn on Macrobius, l.c.
[661]. Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Ant. Rom. ii. 66; Plutarch, Numa, 11 and 14; Solinus, i. 21; Ovid, Fasti, vi. 263 sqq.; id., Tristia, iii. 1. 29 sq.; Tacitus, Annals, xv. 41.
[662]. Servius on Virgil, Aen. viii. 363. Festus, however, distinguishes the old royal palace (Regia) from the house of the King of the Sacred Rites (s.v. “Sacram viam,” pp. 290, 293, ed. C. O. Müller). In classical times the Regia was the residence or office of the Pontifex Maximus; but we can hardly doubt that formerly it was the house of the Rex Sacrorum. See O. Gilbert, Geschichte und Topographie der Stadt Rom im Altertum, i. 225, 235 sq., 341, 344. As to the existing remains of the Regia, the temple of Vesta, and the house of the Vestals, see O. Richter, Topographie der Stadt Rom, 2nd Ed., pp. 88 sqq.; Ch. Huelsen, Die Ausgrabungen auf dem Forum Romanum 2nd Ed., (Rome, 1903), pp. 62 sqq., 88 sqq.; Mrs. E. Burton-Brown, Recent Excavations in the Roman Forum (London, 1904), pp. 26 sqq.
[663]. Dio Cassius, liv. 27, who tells us that Augustus annexed the house of the King of the Sacred Rites to the house of the Vestals, on which it abutted.
[664]. Many such phenomena are noted by Julius Obsequens in his book of prodigies, appended to W. Weissenborn’s edition of Livy, vol. x. 2, pp. 193 sqq. (Berlin, 1881).