[273] Cato, R.R. 141. Mars is there invoked as able to keep off (averruncare) evil influences and to make the crops grow, etc.; he has become in the second century b.c. a powerful deity in the actual processes of husbandry, just as he became in the city a powerful deity of war. But as he was not localised either on the farm or in the city, I prefer to think that he was originally conceived as a Power outside the boundary in each case, but for that very reason all the more to be propitiated by the settlers within it.
[274] See below, p. 235.
[275] So Wissowa, R.K. p. 131. Cp. R.F. p. 39, note 4. Deubner in Archiv, 1905, p. 75.
[276] Servius, commenting on line 3 of Aen. viii. (utque impulit arma) writes: "nam is qui belli susceperat curam, sacrarium Martis ingressus, primo ancilia commovebat, post hastam simulacri ipsius, dicens, Mars vigila." The mention of a statue shows that this account belongs to a late period. But Varro seems to have stated that there was originally only a spear; see a passage of Clement of Alexandria in the fragments of the Ant. rer. div., Agahd, p. 210, to which Deubner (l.c.) adds Arnobius vi. 11. Deubner calls this spear a fetish, which is not the right word if the deity were immanent in it in the sense suggested by "Mars vigila." See above, p. 116. If Servius correctly reports the practice, it must be compared with the clashing of shields and spears by the Salii, which may thus have had a positive as well as negative object.
[277] Livy v. 52.
[278] Mr. A. B. Cook (Classical Review, 1904, p. 368) has tried to connect both names with the Greek word πρῖνοϛ, and Professor Conway, quoted by him, is inclined to lend the weight of his great authority to the conjecture. Thus Quirinus would be an oak-god, and Quirites oak-spearmen. We must, however, remember that Mr. Cook is, so to speak, on an oak scent, and his keenness as a hunter leads him sometimes astray. One is a little perplexed to understand why Jupiter, Janus, Mars, and Quirinus should all be oak-gods (and all in origin identical as such!). On the other hand, it is fair to note that the original spear was probably of wood, with the point hardened in the fire, like the hasta praeusta of the Fetiales: Festus, p. 101. If quiris has really anything to do with oaks, it would be more natural to explain the two words as springing from an old place-name, Quirium, as Niebuhr did long ago, and to derive that again from the oaks among which it may have stood. But I am content to take quiris as simply a spear, as Buecheler did; see Deubner, op. cit. p. 76. Since the above was written, the article "Quirinus" by Wissowa in the Myth. Lex. has appeared. Naturally it does not add anything to our knowledge; but Wissowa holds to the opinion that the most probable derivation of the name Quirinus is from Quirium, possibly the name of the settlement on the Quirinal; and compares Q. pater (e.g. Livy v. 52. 7) with the Reatinus pater of C.I.L. ix. 4676.
[279] The Nonae Caprotinae (July 7), the day when women sacrificed to Juno Caprotina under a wild fig-tree in the Campus Martius, is not known to us except from Varro. See R.F. p. 178, where (note 8) is a suggestion that the festival had to do with the caprificatio, or method of ripening the figs, which Dr. Frazer has expanded in his Lectures on Kingship, p. 270, believing the process to be that of fertilisation.
[280] Classical Review, vol. ix. p. 474 foll. The same view has recently been taken independently by W. Otto in Philologus, 1905, pp. 215 foll., 221. It is perfectly clear that the monthly sacrifice to Juno was the duty of the wife of the rex sacrorum; a pontifex minor is also mentioned (Macrob. i. 15. 19).
[281] Wissowa, R.K. p. 116.
[282] Ib. p. 114.