[666] R.F. p. 56, where unfortunately the word is misprinted Pubertas. Wissowa, R.K. 126, thinks of Hebe in a Latin form; in his view it must be a Greek deity, being brought in by the decemviri and the books. But we shall find that these begin now to interfere with Roman cults, and in such a crisis we need not wonder at it. Wissowa allows that we do not know where this Hebe can have come from, nor, I may add, why she should have come. That there was some special meaning in the combination Juventas, Hercules, Genius I feel sure, and I conjecture that it may be found in the urgent need of a supply of iuvenes. Hercules and Genius seem both to represent the male principle of life (R.F. 142 foll.). Juventas speaks for herself, but we may remember that the tirones sacrificed to her on the day of the Liberalia (17th March), and that Liber is almost certainly another form of Genius (R.F. 55).
[667] Livy xxii. 1.
[668] It is only from this passage that we know of the oracle. See Bouché-Leclercq, Hist. de divination, iv. 146. That of Caere is mentioned in Livy xxi. 62. Both cities were mainly Etruscan.
[669] Livy xxvii. 37 betrays some knowledge of the infectious nature of prodigy-reporting: "Sub unius prodigii, ut fit, mentionem, alia quoque nuntiata."
[670] Pliny, N.H. xxxv. 115, where the verses are quoted as inscribed on the paintings in her temple at Ardea. Note that Juno is here called the wife of Jupiter by a Greek artist from Asia.
[671] For Juno as the woman's deity and guardian spirit, see above, p. 135. To refer this prominence of the goddess to her connection with Carthage and mythical enmity to the Romans, as we see it in the Aeneid, is premature; we must suppose that each Juno was still a local deity, and no general conception in the later Greek sense is as yet possible.
[672] For Feronia, see R.F. 252 foll.
[673] The procurationes ordered were doubtless recorded in the annales maximi. The books of the decemviri, we must suppose, were burnt with the oracles in 38 B.C. (Diels, Sib. Blätter, p. 6 note).
[674] Wissowa, R.K. 170; Marq. 586 foll.
[675] Livy xxii. 9-10.