Of the stone itself we know nothing. It is open to us to guess that it was originally a boundary-stone, perhaps between the ager of the Palatine city and that of the Quirinal. The mons Capitolinus seems to have been neutral ground, as we may guess by the tradition of the asylum there; it was outside the pomoerium, and in the early Republic was the property of the priestly collegia[[1482]]. It was, therefore, a very appropriate place for a terminus between two communities[[1483]].
From Ovid (679 foll.) we gather that there was a terminus-stone at the sixth milestone on the via Laurentina, at which public sacrifices were made, perhaps on the day of the Terminalia: this was probably at one time the limit of the ager Romanus in that direction.
vi Kal. Mart. (Feb. 24). N.
REGIF[UGIUM], (CAER. MAFF. PHILOC.) REGIFUGIUM, CUM TARQUINIUS SUPERBUS FERTUR AB URBE EXPULSUS. (SILV.)
This note of Silvius is based on a very old and natural misapprehension. Ovid[[1484]], and probably most Romans, believed that the expulsion of Tarquin was commemorated on this day. There is, however, strong indirect evidence to show that the ‘flight of the king’ on Feb. 24 was something very different.
1. We have already had a ‘flight of the people’ (Poplifugia) on July 5; and we saw that this was probably a purificatory rite of which the meaning had been lost—the sacrifice perhaps of a sacred animal followed by the flight of the crowd as from a murder. It seems impossible, at any rate unwise, to separate Poplifugia and Regifugium in general meaning, for there is no other parallel to them in the calendar. Both were explained historically by the Romans, because in both the obscure (and perhaps obsolete) religious rite was inexplicable otherwise; and we must also endeavour to treat both on the same principle.
2. It seems pretty clear that Verrius Flaccus did not believe in the historical explanation of the Regifugium. In Festus, page 278, we find a mutilated gloss which evidently refers to this day, and is thus completed by Mommsen[[1485]]:—
[Regifugium notatur in fastis dies a.d.] vi kal. [Mart. qui creditur sic dict]us quia [eo die Tarquinius rex fugerit ex urbe]. Quod fal[sum est; nam e castris in exilium abisse cum r]ettul[erunt annales. Rectius explicabit qui regem e]t Salios[[1486]] [hoc die ... facere sacri]ficium in [comitio eoque perfecto illum inde fugere n]overit ...
It may be said that this is all guesswork, and no evidence; but it is borne out by the following passage in Plutarch’s sixty-third Roman question:
Ἔστι γοῦν τις ἐν ἀγορᾷ θυσία πρὸς τῷ λεγομένῳ Κομητίῳ πάτριος, ἣν θύσας ὁ Βασιλεὺς κατὰ τάχος ἄπεισι Φεύγων ἐξ ἀγορϡας.