Whence Plutarch drew this statement we cannot tell. He does not give the day on which the sacrifice and flight took place; and Huschke[[1487]] has denied that he refers to the Regifugium at all. He believes that Plutarch is thinking of the days marked Q. R. C. F. (March 24 and May 24), on which Varro says, or seems to say, that the Rex sacrorum sacrificed in the Comitium[[1488]]; and this may have been so, for the note in the Fasti Praenestini on March 24 shows that there was a popular misinterpretation of Q. R. C. F., which took the letters to mean, ‘quod eo die ex comitio fugerit rex.’ In this confusion we can but appeal to the word Regifugium, which is attached to Feb. 24 only. Taking this together with Plutarch’s statement, and remembering the great improbability of the historical explanation being the true one, we are justified in accepting Mommsen’s completion of the passage in Festus, and in concluding that there was really on Feb. 24 a flight of the Rex after a sacrifice.
And this view is strengthened by the frequent occurrence of sacerdotal flights in ancient and primitive religions. These were first collected by Lobeck[[1489]], and have of late been treated of and variously explained by Mannhardt, Frazer, and Robertson Smith[[1490]]. The best known examples are those of the Bouphonia (‘ox murder’) at Athens, in which every feature shows that the slain ox was regarded, ‘not merely as a victim offered to a god, but in itself a sacred creature, the slaughter of which was sacrilege or murder’[[1491]]; and the sacrifice of a bull-calf to Dionysus at Tenedos, where the priest was attacked with stones, and had to flee for his life[[1492]]. We do not yet know for certain whether the origin of these ideas is to be found in totemism, or in the sanctity of cattle in the pastoral age, or in the representation of the spirit of vegetation in animal form. The second of these explanations, as elucidated by Robertson Smith, would seem most applicable to the Athenian rite; but in the case of the Roman one, we do not know what the victim was. It is also just possible, as Hartung long ago suggested[[1493]], that the victim was a scapegoat carrying away pollution, and therefore to be avoided; but I do not find any example of flight from a scapegoat, among the many instances collected by Mr. Frazer (Golden Bough, ii. 182 foll.).
iii Kal. Mart. (Feb. 27). NP.
EQ[UIRRIA]. (MAFF. CAER.: cp. Varro, L. L. 6. 13).
We have no data whatever for guessing why a horse-race should take place on the last day of February, or why there should be two days of racing, the second being March 14. This has not, however, prevented Huschke[[1494]] from making some marvellous conjectures, in which ingenuity and learning have been utterly thrown away.
We saw[[1495]] that the oldest races of this kind were connected with harvest rejoicings; and Mannhardt[[1496]] suggested that they originated in the desire to catch the spirit of vegetation in the last sheaf or in some animal form. Races also occur in various parts of Europe in the spring—e. g. at the Carnival, at Easter, and at Whitsuntide; and of these he says that they correspond with the others, and that the idea at the bottom of them is ‘die Vorstellung des wetteifernden Frühlingseinzuges der Vegetationsdämonen.’ However this may be, we cannot but be puzzled by the doubling of the Equirria, and are tempted to refer it to the same cause as that of the Salii and Luperci[[1497]].
That both were connected with the cult of Mars is almost beyond question. They were held in the Campus Martius, and were supposed to have been established by Romulus in honour of Mars[[1498]]; and we have already had an example of the occurrence of horses in the Mars-cult. It would seem, then, that the peculiar features of the worship of Mars began even before March 1. Preller noticed this long ago[[1499]], and suggested that even the Lupercalia and the Quirinalia have some relation to the Mars-cult, and that these fall at the time when the first beginnings of spring are felt—e. g. when the first swallows arrive[[1500]]. We may perhaps add the appearance of the Salii at the Regifugium to these foreshadowings of the March rites. Ovid seems to bear out Preller in his lines on this day[[1501]]:
Iamque duae restant noctes de mense secundo,
Marsque citos iunctis curribus urget equos:
Ex vero positum permansit Equirria nomen,