[439]. See above, pp. [52]-55.
[440]. In Nepaul a festival known as Khichâ Pûjâ is held, at which worship is offered to dogs, and garlands of flowers are placed round the necks of every dog in the country (W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India, Westminster, 1896, ii. 221). But as the custom is apparently not limited to hunting dogs, the explanation suggested above would hardly apply.
[441]. Catullus, xxxiv. 9-20; Cicero, De natura deorum, ii. 26. 68 sq.; Varro, De lingua Latina, v. 68 sq. It deserves to be remembered that Diana’s day was the thirteenth of August, which in general would be the time when the splendid harvest moon was at the full. Indian women in Peru used to pray to the moon to grant them an easy delivery. See P. J. de Arriaga, Extirpacion de la idolatria del Piru (Lima, 1621), p. 32.
[442]. See above, vol. i. p. 12.
[443]. In like manner the Greeks conceived of the goddess Earth as the mother not only of corn but of cattle and of human offspring. See the Homeric Hymn to Earth (No. 30).
[444]. Strabo, iv. 1. 4 and 5, pp. 179 sq. The image on the Aventine was copied from that at Marseilles, which in turn was copied from the one at Ephesus.
[445]. Tacitus, Annals, xii. 8. The Romans feared that the marriage of Claudius with his paternal cousin Agrippina, which they regarded as incest, might result in some public calamity (Tacitus, Annals, xii. 5).
[446]. See above, pp. [107] sqq.
[447]. See above, vol. i. pp. 20 sq., 40.
[448]. Herodotus, i. 181 sq.