[1027]. Zamachschar, cited by Graf zu Solms-Laubach, op. cit. p. 82. For more evidence as to the fig in antiquity see V. Hehn, Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere, 7th Ed., pp. 94 sqq.
[1028]. Letter of Mr. C. W. Hobley to me, dated Nairobi, British East Africa, July 27th, 1910. This interesting information was given spontaneously and not in answer to any questions of mine.
[1029]. C. W. Hobley, The Ethnology of A-Kamba and other East African Tribes (Cambridge, 1910), pp. 85, 89 sq. In British Central Africa “every village has its ‘prayer-tree,’ under which the sacrifices are offered. It stands (usually) in the bwalo, the open space which Mr. Macdonald calls the ‘forum,’ and is, sometimes, at any rate, a wild fig-tree.” “This is the principal tree used for making bark-cloth. Livingstone says, ‘It is a sacred tree all over Africa and India’; and I learn from M. Auguste Chevalier that it is found in every village of Senegal and French Guinea, and looked on as ‘a fetich-tree’” (Miss A. Werner, The Natives of British Central Africa, pp. 62 sq.).
[1030]. From the unpublished papers of the Rev. John Roscoe, which he has kindly placed at my disposal.
[1031]. Varro, De lingua Latina, v. 54; Livy, i. 4. 5; Ovid, Fasti, ii. 411 sq.; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xv. 77; Festus, pp. 266, 270, 271, ed. C. O. Müller; Tacitus, Annals, xiii. 58; Servius on Virgil, Aen. viii. 90; Plutarch, Romulus, 4; id., Quaestiones Romanae, 57; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquitates Romanae, iii. 71. 5. All the Roman writers speak of the tree as a cultivated fig (ficus), not a wild fig (caprificus), and Dionysius agrees with them. Plutarch alone (Romulus, 4) describes it as a wild fig-tree (ἐρινεός). See also above, p. [10].
[1032]. Festus, p. 266, ed. C. O. Müller; Ettore Pais, Ancient Legends of Roman History (London, 1906), pp. 55 sqq. Festus indeed treats the derivation as an absurdity, and many people will be inclined to agree with him.
[1033]. On the fifth of July a ceremony called the Flight of the People was performed at Rome. Some ancient writers thought that it commemorated the dispersal of the people after the disappearance of Romulus. But this is to confuse the dates; for, according to tradition, the death of Romulus took place on the seventh, not the fifth of July, and therefore after instead of before the Flight of the People. See Varro, De lingua Latina, vi. 18; Macrobius, Sat. iii. 2. 14; Dionysius Halicarn. Ant. Rom. ii. 56. 5; Plutarch, Romulus, 29; id., Camillus, 33; W. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, pp. 174 sqq. Mr. Warde Fowler may be right in thinking that some connexion perhaps existed between the ceremonies of the two days, the fifth and the seventh; and I agree with his suggestion that “the story itself of the death of Romulus had grown out of some religious rite performed at this time of year.” I note as a curious coincidence, for it can hardly be more, that at Bodmin in Cornwall a festival was held on the seventh of July, when a Lord of Misrule was appointed, who tried people for imaginary crimes and sentenced them to be ducked in a quagmire called Halgaver, which is explained to mean “the goat’s moor.” See T. F. Thiselton Dyer, British Popular Customs, p. 339. The “goat’s moor” is an odd echo of the “goat’s marsh” at which Romulus disappeared on the same day of the year (Livy, i. 16. 1; Plutarch, Romulus, 29; id., Camillus, 33).
[1034]. Livy, i. 14. 1 sq.; Dionysius Halicarn. Ant. Rom. ii. 52. 3; Plutarch, Romulus, 23.
[1035]. Dionysius Halicarn. Ant. Rom. iii. 35; Zonaras, Annales, vii. 6. As to his reported death by lightning, see above, p. [181].
[1036]. Plutarch, Numa, 22. I have pruned the luxuriant periods in which Plutarch dwells, with edifying unction, on the righteous visitation of God which overtook that early agnostic Tullus Hostilius.