[1017]. The learned Swiss scholar, J. J. Bachofen long ago drew out in minute detail the parallel between these birth legends of the Roman kings and licentious festivals like the Roman Saturnalia and the Babylonian Sacaea. See his book Die Sage von Tanaquil (Heidelberg, 1870), pp. 133 sqq. To be frank, I have not had the patience to read through his long dissertation.
[1018]. Livy, i. 16; Dionysius Halic. Ant. Rom. ii. 56; Plutarch, Romulus, 27; Florus, i. 1. 16 sq. See above, pp. [181] sq.
[1019]. Varro, De lingua Latina, vi. 18; Plutarch, Romulus, 29; id., Camillus, 33; Macrobius, Saturn. i. 11. 36-40. The analogy of this festival to the Babylonian Sacaea was long ago pointed out by J. J. Bachofen. See his book Die Sage von Tanaquil (Heidelberg, 1870), pp. 172 sqq.
[1020]. Aristotle, Hist. anim. v. 32, p. 557b, ed. Bekker; Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. ii. 8; id., De causis plantarum, ii. 9; Plutarch, Quaest. conviv. vii. 2. 2; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xv. 79-81, xvi. 114, xvii. 256; Palladius, iv. 10. 28, vii. 5. 2; Columella, xi. 2. 56; Geoponica, iii. 6, x. 48. As to the practice in modern Greece and the fig-growing districts of Asia Minor, see P. de Tournefort, Relation d’un voyage du Levant (Amsterdam, 1718), i. 130; W. R. Paton, “The Pharmakoi and the Story of the Fall,” Revue archéologique, IVème Série, ix. (1907) p. 51. For an elaborate examination of the process and its relation to the domestication and spread of the fig-tree, see Graf zu Solms-Laubach, “Die Herkunft, Domestication und Verbreitung des gewöhnlichen Feigenbaums (Ficus Carica, L.),” Abhandlungen der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, xxviii. (1882) pp. 1-106. This last writer thinks that the operation was not practised by Italian husbandmen, because it is not mentioned by Cato and Varro. But their silence can hardly outweigh the express mention and recommendation of it by Palladius and Columella. Theophrastus, it is true, says that the process was not in use in Italy (Hist. Plantarum, ii. 8. 1), but he can scarcely have had exact information on this subject. Caprificatio, as this artificial fertilisation of fig-trees is called, is still employed by the Neapolitan peasantry, though it seems to be unknown in northern Italy. Pliny’s account has no independent value, as he merely copies from Theophrastus. The name “goat-fig” (caprificus) applied to the wild fig-tree may be derived from the notion that the tree is a male who mounts the female as the he-goat mounts the she-goat. Similarly the Messenians called the tree simply “he-goat” (τράγος). See Pausanias, iv. 20. 1-3.
[1021]. G. Pitrè, Usi e costumi, credenze e pregiudizi del popolo siciliano, iii. 113.
[1022]. Budgett Meakin, The Moors (London, 1902), p. 258; E. Doutté, Magie et religion dans l’Afrique du Nord (Algiers, 1908), p. 568.
[1023]. A. Engler, in V. Hehn’s Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere, 7th Ed., (Berlin, 1902), p. 99. Compare Graf zu Solms-Laubach, op. cit.; Encyclopaedia Biblica, s.v. “Fig-tree,” vol. iv. 1519. The ancients were well aware of the production of these insects in the wild fig-tree and their transference to the cultivated fig-tree. Sometimes instead of fertilising the trees by hand they contented themselves with planting wild fig-trees near cultivated fig-trees, so that the fertilisation was effected by the wind, which blew the insects from the male to the female trees. See Aristotle, l.c.; Theophrastus, De causis plantarum, ii. 9; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xv. 79-81; Palladius, iv. 10. 28. On subject of the fertilisation of the fig the late Professor H. Marshall Ward of Cambridge kindly furnished me with the following note, which will serve to supplement and correct the brief account in the text:—“The fig is a hollow case full of flowers. In the wild fig a small gall wasp (Cynips psenes) lays its eggs: this kind of fig is still called Caprificus. The eggs hatch in the female flowers at the base of the hollow fig: at the top, near the ostiole observable on any ripe fig, are the male flowers. When the eggs hatch, and the little insects creep through the ostiole, the male flowers dust the wasp with pollen, and the insect flies to another flower (to lay its eggs), and so fertilises many of the female flowers in return for the nursery afforded its eggs. Now, the cultivated fig is apt to be barren of male flowers. Hence the hanging of branches bearing wild figs enables the escaping wasps to do the trick. The ancients knew the fact that the propinquity of the Caprificus helped the fertility of the cultivated fig, but, of course, they did not know the details of the process. The further complexities are, chiefly, that the fig bears two kinds of female flowers: one especially fitted for the wasp’s convenience, the other not. The Caprificus figs are inedible. In Naples three crops of them are borne every year, viz. Mamme (in April), Profichi (in June), and Mammoni (in August). It is the June crop that bears most male flowers and is most useful.” The suggestion that the festival of the seventh of July was connected with this horticultural operation is due to L. Preller (Römische Mythologie, 3rd Ed., i. 287).
[1024]. See above, pp. [24] sq.
[1025]. 1 Kings iv. 25; 2 Kings xviii. 31; Isaiah xxxvi. 16; Micah iv. 4; Zechariah iii. 10; Judges ix. 10 sq.; H. B. Tristram, The Natural History of the Bible 9th Ed. (London, 1898), pp. 350 sqq.; Encyclopaedia Biblica, s.v. “Fig Tree,” vol. ii. 1519 sq.
[1026]. Herodotus, i. 71.